[Xen-devel] Stability of shared info structs?

[John Levon <levon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This changeset:

changeset:   8551:c6f7774cae63932f327413586d58f3c7d08cb378
description:
Pass NMIs to DOM0 via a dedicated callback, core Xen support.

appears to have modified the size of struct arch_shared_info, as far as
I know, after the interface was supposed to be stable. This would have
broken any 3.0 domUs using the size of the shared_info structure for
whatever reason. Was this an error, or is the implication that a domU
cannot take the size of certain shared structures (and if so, which
ones)?

We have a need to introduce a new field to shared info:

xen_pfn_t dom_info_pfn;

This would be a domain-set PFN allowing self-contained introspection.
Currently, any introspection (e.g. via gdb) requires information outside
of the domain such as the correct kernel binary. With this pfn, tools
would be able to look into some domain-provided structure to allow
introspection to "bootstrap" itself. Of course for cores and save files
this would require modifications to store the shared info page, but this
is both a good thing, and I understand there are format changes planned
anyway?

It seems that at least these structures need some padding to allow
further additions without breaking the ABI.

Comments?

thanks,
john

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