WARNING - OLD ARCHIVES

This is an archived copy of the Xen.org mailing list, which we have preserved to ensure that existing links to archives are not broken. The live archive, which contains the latest emails, can be found at http://lists.xen.org/
   
 
 
Xen 
 
Home Products Support Community News
 
   
 

xen-devel

Re: [Xen-devel] Re: how to handle paged hypercall args?

To: Jan Beulich <JBeulich@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] Re: how to handle paged hypercall args?
From: Tim Deegan <Tim.Deegan@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2010 09:37:05 +0000
Cc: Olaf Hering <olaf@xxxxxxxxx>, "xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Keir Fraser <keir@xxxxxxx>, Patrick Colp <pjcolp@xxxxxxxxx>
Delivery-date: Mon, 15 Nov 2010 01:38:20 -0800
Envelope-to: www-data@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In-reply-to: <4CDD1AB70200007800021EB7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
List-help: <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=help>
List-id: Xen developer discussion <xen-devel.lists.xensource.com>
List-post: <mailto:xen-devel@lists.xensource.com>
List-subscribe: <http://lists.xensource.com/mailman/listinfo/xen-devel>, <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=subscribe>
List-unsubscribe: <http://lists.xensource.com/mailman/listinfo/xen-devel>, <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=unsubscribe>
References: <20101111143338.GA27721@xxxxxxxxx> <C901FDDB.999A%keir@xxxxxxx> <4CDD1AB70200007800021EB7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sender: xen-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14)
At 09:45 +0000 on 12 Nov (1289555111), Jan Beulich wrote:
> Furthermore, even for the do_memory_op() one, encoding a
> continuation for a failure of copying in the arguments is clearly
> acceptable (if no other solution can be found), but unwinding
> the whole operation when copying out the results fails is at
> least undesirable (and can lead to a live lock). So I think a
> general (hopefully transparent to the individual hypercall
> handlers) solution needs to be found, and a word on the
> general issue from the original paging code authors (and their
> thoughts of it when designing the whole thing) would be very
> much appreciated.

Maybe Patrick can comment too, but my recollection of discussing this is
that we would have to propagate failures caused by paging at least as
far as the dom0 kernel, because otherwise a single-vcpu dom0 kernel
could deadlock with its one vcpu stuck in a hypercall (or continually
having it preempted and retried) and the paging binary that would
unstick it never getting scheduled.

Cheers,

Tim.

-- 
Tim Deegan <Tim.Deegan@xxxxxxxxxx>
Principal Software Engineer, Xen Platform Team
Citrix Systems UK Ltd.  (Company #02937203, SL9 0BG)

_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel