Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] x86/HVM: honor p2m_ram_ro in hvm_map_guest_frame_rw()

[Tim Deegan <tim@xxxxxxx>]

At 07:51 -0600 on 11 Aug (1439279513), Jan Beulich wrote:
> >>> On 27.07.15 at 13:09, <tim@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > At 13:02 +0100 on 24 Jul (1437742964), Andrew Cooper wrote:
> >> On 24/07/15 10:41, Jan Beulich wrote:
> >> > Beyond that log-dirty handling in _hvm_map_guest_frame() looks bogus
> >> > too: What if a XEN_DOMCTL_SHADOW_OP_* gets issued and acted upon
> >> > between the setting of the dirty flag and the actual write happening?
> >> > I.e. shouldn't the flag instead be set in hvm_unmap_guest_frame()?
> >> 
> >> It does indeed.  (Ideally the dirty bit should probably be held high for 
> >> the duration that a mapping exists, but that is absolutely infeasible to 
> >> do).
> > 
> > IMO that would not be very useful -- a well-behaved toolstack will
> > have to make sure that relevant mappings are torn down before
> > stop-and-copy.  Forcing the dirty bit high in the meantime just makes
> > every intermediate pass send a wasted copy of the page, without
> > actually closing the race window if the tools are buggy.
> 
> Making sure such mappings got torn down in time doesn't help
> when the most recent write happened _after_ the most recent
> clearing of the dirty flag in a pass prior to stop-and-copy.

This is why e.g. __gnttab_unmap_common sets the dirty bit again
as it unmaps.

Cheers,

Tim.

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