Re: [Xen-devel] Vanilla Linux and has_foreign_mapping

[Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@xxxxxxxx>]

Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 01:11:28PM -0400, Michael Abd-El-Malek wrote:
>   
> > -       /* mm's last user has gone, and its about to be pulled down */
> > -       arch_exit_mmap(mm);
> > -
> >         lru_add_drain();
> >         flush_cache_mm(mm);
> >         tlb = tlb_gather_mmu(mm, 1);
> >         /* Don't update_hiwater_rss(mm) here, do_exit already did */
> >         /* Use -1 here to ensure all VMAs in the mm are unmapped */
> >         end = unmap_vmas(&tlb, vma, 0, -1, &nr_accounted, NULL);
> > +       /* mm's last user has gone, and its about to be pulled down */
> > +       arch_exit_mmap(mm);
> >     
> If that's what you need I doubt mmu notifiers can help. mmu notifiers
> allows to keep secondary mmu mappings (like vmx/svm/npt/ept sptes) in
> total synchrony with the primary mmu mappings established by the linux
> VM. All secondary mmu mappings must be zapped and the secondary mmu
> must be freezed before the pages are freed, hence the last mmu
> notifier call is ->release and it's done _before_ the above
> unmap_vmas.
>   
For Xen, arch_exit_mmap() needs to be done before unmap_vmas since the 
whole point is to switch to init_mm before tearing down the pagetable to 
avoid lots of hypercalls.  The trouble is that mappings of foreign pages 
need to be dealt with specially because Xen requires that they be 
unmapped with a special mechanism.
What I was wondering if, rather than getting a callback, we could call 
into the mmu notifier machinery to get a list of mapped foreign pages 
and their corresponding pte pointers so that they can be "manually" 
unmapped early in Xen's arch_exit_mmap().
On the other hand, I think we can just hang a shadow page off the pte 
page's struct page to store all the extra metadata we need...
   J

_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel