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Re: Dom0less + Argo enablement
- To: Stefano Stabellini <sstabellini@xxxxxxxxxx>
- From: Christopher Clark <christopher.w.clark@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2021 01:42:43 -0700
- Cc: xen-devel <xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Bertrand Marquis <Bertrand.Marquis@xxxxxxx>, Alec.Kwapis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Jason Andryuk <jandryuk@xxxxxxxxx>, eric chanudet <eric.chanudet@xxxxxxxxx>, james.mckenzie@xxxxxx, christian.limpach@xxxxxx, Daniel Smith <dpsmith@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Rich Persaud <persaur@xxxxxxxxx>, openxt <openxt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Nicholas Tsirakis <tsirakisn@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Delivery-date: Tue, 21 Sep 2021 08:43:09 +0000
- List-id: Xen developer discussion <xen-devel.lists.xenproject.org>
Hi all,
This email is for anybody interested in using Argo with Dom0less setups
for domain-to-domain communications.
Argo is a secure VM-to-VM communication mechanism based on hypercalls
[1]. It is a good fit for Dom0less setups because Argo is lightweight
and doesn't make use of PV frontends, backends, and xenstore. Thus, it
is easier to enable in simple Dom0less setups where VMs are booting in
parallel, backends cannot be assumed to be already up and running, and
the goal is just to get two VMs to talk to each others.
Excellent - I am very happy to see interest in Argo for this
Argo makes use of event channels for notifications. Dom0less VMs don't
have event channels support yet, although it is work-in-progress. The
attached patch for Linux (not ready for upstreaming) enables the
necessary event channels initialization.
In addition, you also need to add the following to the DomU device tree
(see xen/arch/arm/domain_build.c:prepare_dtb_domU):
event-channel {
compatible = "xen,xen-4.15", "xen,xen";
interrupts = <0x01 0x0f 0xf08>;
interrupt-parent = <0xfde8>;
};
The final pieces to enable Argo are:
- CONFIG_ARGO in the Xen build
- the Argo Linux kernel module
https://github.com/OpenXT/linux-xen-argo
This is an important pointer. The argo-linux directory in the repo contains the source for the current best Linux Argo driver, which has been in use and actively maintained in OpenXT for an extended period. It is derived from the original XenClient v4v driver -- Nicolas Tsirakis did great work porting all the OpenXT v4v software over to this Argo driver and the libargo userspace component when we migrated. Jason Andryuk has recently just completed some strong modernization work that advances this Argo driver's use of Linux synchronization primitives.
For the curious, an alternative Linux Argo driver written by Eric Chanudet is in also the same repository in the vsock-argo directory: it explores a different approach for Linux to use the Argo primitives under the Vsock address family to allow socket communication between Xen domains. A third code base that could be of interest for developing a new Linux driver for Argo would be a port of the HP uxen hypervisor's v4v driver, which has a good modular structure, to Argo on Xen. The code for the starting point (for a fairly adventurous project) is here:
- the Yocto recipe was based on
https://github.com/dozylynx/meta-argo-linux
Ack - this Yocto layer shows recipes for the several components involved with building an Argo-enabled system.
- pass dom0less_domU to the domU kernel command line
Then you are good to go for using Argo in your Dom0less VMs, e.g.:
>From receiver domain: streamTest -domid 5 -port 8022 -file test.txt -receive
>From sender domain: streamTest -domid 4 -port 8022 -file test.txt -send -connect
Many thanks to Alec Kwapis from DornerWorks for all the information and
the patch!
Thanks, Alec, for exploring Argo with dom0less and for developing the patch -- excellent work! I am certain that it will be helpful.
Christopher
Cheers,
Stefano
[1] https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Argo:_Hypervisor-Mediated_Exchange_(HMX)_for_Xen
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