Re: [Xen-devel] [rfc/patch] pv-on-hvm: make netfront grab PCI ressources.

["Kirk Allan" <kallan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> On Fri, Feb 9, 2007 at  4:17 AM, in message <45CC5846.3040606@xxxxxxx>, Gerd
Hoffmann <kraxel@xxxxxxx> wrote: 
> Keir Fraser wrote:
>> On 8/2/07 16:50, "Gerd Hoffmann" <kraxel@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 
>>> This patch makes netfront grab the rtl8139 PCI ressources when running
>>> as paravirtualized driver in a HVM domain.  If the driver fails to grab
>>> the ressources it refuses to load.  If it succeeds grabbing the
>>> ressources this shoulld prevent any other driver from taking the device.
>>>
>>> This makes sure that we don't have two drivers (8139 pci driver and
>>> netfront) active for the same device.
>> 
>> It seems to me this is a tools issue: they should ensure that only netback
>> or qemu advertises a particular interface.
> 
> There is one problem with that approach:  The bochs BIOS talks to the
> emulated devices for booting from the ide disk.  Once the OS is up and
> running you'll want to use the paravirtual blkfront driver if possible.
>  Same for pxe boot and virtual nic I guess ...
> 
>> In any case, doing a hack in
>> netfront doesn't work if the rtl8139 driver gets probed first?
> 
> Well, netfront can't grab the PCI device then, and refuses to load.
> That case is harder to handle though, I'm not that happy with the
> solution yet.  The current approach has the drawback that the driver
> will work only with recent qemu- dm versions (subsystem ID is needed for
> device matching).
> 
> Another idea:  We could make the tools add the ioport / iomem ranges to
> xenstore.  Then the frontend drivers can try to grab these ressources
> and refuse to initialize if they are not available.  This way we can
> have some fancy helper functions to handle that.  The scheme also
> doesn't need frontend driver updates in case the emulated device changes
> from rtl8139 to something else.  And we don't run into compatibility
> problems.
> 
> cheers,
>   Gerd

Back in 3.0.3 and earlier, if the guest's config file did not have the 
'type=ioemu' in the vif = [....] line, qemu would somehow not be instructed to 
insert an emulated NIC into the guest.  Now, with or without the 'type=ioemu', 
an emulated device shows up in the guest.  Maybe some tool enhancements could 
be done and based on the config file populate emulated devices or not.

Thanks
Kirk


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