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Re: [Xen-devel] A question about SHARE_PFN_WITH_DOMAIN

To: "Tian, Kevin" <kevin.tian@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] A question about SHARE_PFN_WITH_DOMAIN
From: Keir Fraser <Keir.Fraser@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 09:14:39 +0000
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On 13 Jan 2006, at 07:10, Tian, Kevin wrote:

Secondly, there is the subtle and thorny issue of domain destruction.
Xen assume that any domain that has a non-zero reference count has a
valid shared_info, for example.

Could you please point out where I can find such assumption in the code?

Sure. For example, event channel bindings are torn down only when the domain refcnt falls to zero. If we freed the shared_info page when dom0 kills the domain, the refcnt may remain non-zero for some time after that (because of mappings of network/block ring pages for example). If dom0 tries to notify via an event channel, the evtchn code in Xen will happily dereference the dying domU's shared_info pointer which would no longer be valid.

So we cannot free shared_info until domain_destruct(), and if Xen held a reference on shared_info then domain_destruct() would never be called.

 -- Keir


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