Re: [Xen-devel] passing hypercall parameters by pointer

[Hollis Blanchard <hollisb@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Aug 18, 2005, at 1:56 AM, Tian, Kevin wrote:

> > From: Hollis Blanchard
> > Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2005 6:05 AM
> >        case DOM0_GETMEMLIST:
> >            op->u.getmemlist.buffer = 
> > virt_to_phys(op->u.getmemlist.buffer);
> >            break;
> If following Ian's suggestion, you have to create a list of pfn here
> instead of only converting start address. There's no guaranty that the
> buffer is limited in one page. ;-)
Actually that was an explicitly stated limitation.

But I think I like this scatterlist idea. So for every pointer (buffer 
in the above example), instead the pseudo-physical address to a 
scatterlist will be passed to the hypervisor, and then 
copy_to/from_user expects a scatterlist address instead of a pointer. I 
think the copy_to/from_user and get/put_user API would need to change 
though: you'd need the value, the scatterlist pointer, and an offset 
into the scatterlist.
So x86 would need a slight API change, but could continue without 
dealing with any scatterlists, i.e. no ABI change.
The PowerPC kernel would need knowledge of every hypercall structure to 
create and translate the scatterlist. I know that's an idea Jimi isn't 
fond of, but it really seems like the best solution here.
--
Hollis Blanchard
IBM Linux Technology Center


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