linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH RFC 00/39] x86/KVM: Xen HVM guest support

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Message-ID: <6bc9183d-82db-f4d8-9dc1-e14dea3e354e@oracle.com>
Date:   Wed, 20 Feb 2019 16:29:00 -0800
From:   Ankur Arora <ankur.a.arora@...cle.com>
To:     Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@...hat.com>,
        Joao Martins <joao.m.martins@...cle.com>, kvm@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Cc:     Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@...cle.com>,
        Radim Krčmář <rkrcmar@...hat.com>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>, Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>,
        "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, x86@...nel.org,
        Juergen Gross <jgross@...e.com>,
        Stefano Stabellini <sstabellini@...nel.org>,
        xen-devel@...ts.xenproject.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC 00/39] x86/KVM: Xen HVM guest support

On 2/20/19 1:09 PM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 20/02/19 21:15, Joao Martins wrote:
>>   2. PV Driver support (patches 17 - 39)
>>
>>   We start by redirecting hypercalls from the backend to routines
>>   which emulate the behaviour that PV backends expect i.e. grant
>>   table and interdomain events. Next, we add support for late
>>   initialization of xenbus, followed by implementing
>>   frontend/backend communication mechanisms (i.e. grant tables and
>>   interdomain event channels). Finally, introduce xen-shim.ko,
>>   which will setup a limited Xen environment. This uses the added
>>   functionality of Xen specific shared memory (grant tables) and
>>   notifications (event channels).
> 
> I am a bit worried by the last patches, they seem really brittle and
> prone to breakage.  I don't know Xen well enough to understand if the
> lack of support for GNTMAP_host_map is fixable, but if not, you have to
> define a completely different hypercall.
I assume you are aware of most of this, but just in case, here's the
flow when a backend driver wants to map a grant-reference in the
host: it allocates an empty struct page (via ballooning) and does a
map_grant_ref(GNTMAP_host_map) hypercall. In response, Xen validates the
grant-reference and maps it onto the address associated with the struct
page.
After this, from the POV of the underlying network/block drivers, these
struct pages can be used as just regular pages.

To support this in a KVM environment, where AFAICS no remapping of pages
is possible, the idea was to make minimal changes to the backend drivers
such that map_grant_ref() could just return the PFN from which the
backend could derive the struct page.

To ensure that backends -- when running in this environment -- have been
modified to deal with these new semantics, our map_grant_ref()
implementation explicitly disallows the GNTMAP_host_map flag.

Now if I'm reading you right, you would prefer something more
straightforward -- perhaps similar semantics but a new flag that
makes this behaviour explicit?

> 
> Of course, tests are missing.  You should use the
> tools/testing/selftests/kvm/ framework, and ideally each patch should
> come with coverage for the newly-added code.
Agreed.

Thanks
Ankur

> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Paolo
>