linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 1/38] KVM: Create kvm-intel.ko module

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite for Android: free password hash cracker in your pocket

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:	Thu, 30 Nov 2006 11:59:57 -0800
From:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...l.org>
To:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>
Cc:	Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
	Avi Kivity <avi@...ranet.com>, kvm-devel@...ts.sourceforge.net,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/38] KVM: Create kvm-intel.ko module

On Thu, 30 Nov 2006 16:44:25 +0100
Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu> wrote:

> > [...] Pretty similar to things like the msr or mtrr driver that expose 
> > cpu features as character drivers aswell.
> 
> you can expose everything as character drivers and ioctls, but that 
> doesnt make it the right solution. It might /start out/ as a driver, 
> because that's an easy to hack model, but the moment something becomes 
> important enough (and virtualization certainly is such a model) it 
> demands a system call.

Actually fourteen syscalls and counting, and some of those have `mode'
arguments.

It's a fat, complex, presumably arch-specific, presumably frequently-changing
API.  So whatever we do will be unpleasant - that's unavoidable in this case,
I suspect.

(hmm, the interface isn't versioned at present - should it be?)

Maybe, perhaps, one day it _should_ be a syscall API.  But right now if we
did that it would become a versioned syscall API with obsolete slots and
various other warts.

I get the feeling we'd be best off if we were to revisit this in a year or
so.

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/