linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] kvm: notify host when guest paniced

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: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

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

Message-ID: <20120229101913.GG5050@redhat.com>
Date:	Wed, 29 Feb 2012 10:19:13 +0000
From:	"Daniel P. Berrange" <berrange@...hat.com>
To:	Avi Kivity <avi@...hat.com>
Cc:	Wen Congyang <wency@...fujitsu.com>,
	kvm list <kvm@...r.kernel.org>,
	KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@...fujitsu.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, qemu-devel <qemu-devel@...gnu.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] kvm: notify host when guest paniced

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 12:05:32PM +0200, Avi Kivity wrote:
> On 02/29/2012 11:58 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> > > 
> > > How about using a virtio-serial channel for this?  You can transfer any
> > > amount of information (including the dump itself).
> >
> > When the guest OS has crashed, any dumps will be done from the host
> > OS using libvirt's core dump mechanism. The guest OS isn't involved
> > and is likely too dead to be of any use anyway. Likewise it is
> > quite probably too dead to work a virtio-serial channel or any
> > similarly complex device. We're really just after the simplest
> > possible notification that the guest kernel has paniced.
> 
> If it's alive enough to panic, it's alive enough to kexec its kdump
> kernel.  After that it can do anything.
> 
> Guest-internal dumps are more useful IMO that host-initiated dumps.  In
> a cloud, the host-initiated dump is left on the host, outside the reach
> of the guest admin, outside the guest image where all the symbols are,
> and sometimes not even on the same host if a live migration occurred. 
> It's more useful in small setups, or if the problem is in the
> hypervisor, not the guest.

I don't think guest vs host dumps should be considered mutually exclusive,
they both have pluses+minuses.

Configuring kexec+kdump requires non-negligable guest admin configuration
work before it's usable, and this work is guest OS specific, if it is possible
at all. A permanent panic notifier that's built in the kernel by default
requires zero guest admin config, and can allow host admin to automate
collection of dumps across all their hosts/guests. The KVM hypercall
notification is fairly trivially ported to any OS kernel, by comparison
with a full virtio + virtio-serial impl.

Regards,
Daniel
-- 
|: http://berrange.com      -o-    http://www.flickr.com/photos/dberrange/ :|
|: http://libvirt.org              -o-             http://virt-manager.org :|
|: http://autobuild.org       -o-         http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/ :|
|: http://entangle-photo.org       -o-       http://live.gnome.org/gtk-vnc :|
--
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/