[Xen-devel] [rfc] [patch] 32/64-bit hypercall interface revisited

[Hollis Blanchard <hollisb@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Last year we had a discussion[1] about how the hypercall ABI
unfortunately contains fields that change width between 32- and 64-bit
builds. This is a huge problem as we come up on the python management
stack for ppc64, since the distributions ship 32-bit python. A 32-bit
python/libxc cannot currently manage a 64-bit hypervisor.

I had a patch but was unable to test it, and some other things were more
important at the time so I dropped the issue. Ultimately, there were
three main issues:

First, "unsigned longs" in the dom0 interface (but not the guest
interface) should be converted[2] to a new type[3]:
        typedef unsigned long long __attribute__((aligned(8))) foo_t;

Second, hypercalls that deal with frame numbers, e.g. DOM0_GETMEMLIST,
also use "unsigned long". I've sent a separate mail about this, but I
think it makes sense to define a DOM0_GETMEMLIST2 hypercall for this
issue. I haven't investigated this fully.

Third, the tools need to treat GUEST_HANDLEs specially.[4] The attached
patch does this; I have a ppc32 app successfully making
DOM0_GETVCPUCONTEXT hcalls to a ppc64 Xen. The patch has only been
compile-tested on x86-32, so I would appreciate it if people could try
it out on x86.

For reference, the PPC changes look something like this:
-    typedef struct { type *p; } __guest_handle_ ## name
+    typedef union { uint64_t u; type *p; } __guest_handle_ ## name

+#define SET_HANDLE(hnd, val) do {           \
+        (void)((hnd).p == (val));           \
+        (hnd).u = (uint64_t)(unsigned long)(void *)(val);  \
+    } while (0)
+
+#define GET_HANDLE(val, hnd) do {           \
+        (val) = (hnd).p;                    \
+    } while (0)

This patch could be applied in advance of solving problems #1 and #2
above. However, it will likely require hand-merging with the libxc
whitespace patch I sent recently.




[1] In the archive, the thread spilled from Sep to Oct:
http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2005-09/threads.html#01106
http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2005-10/threads.html#00205

[2]
http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2005-10/msg00078.html

[3] the alignment of long long on 32-bit x86 is 4 bytes, not 8
http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2005-10/msg00117.html

[4] the original incarnation of GUEST_HANDLE
http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2005-10/msg00205.html

-- 
Hollis Blanchard
IBM Linux Technology Center



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