RE: [Xen-devel] Intercepting memory operations of a guest

["Sina Bahram" <sbahram@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your reply.

What do you mean by the statement that it won't catch "all changes" but only
those seen by the mmu?
 
Also, where can I read more about what enabling shadow page tables means for
pv guests?

The concept I want to implement is very similar, so I'd love to take
advantage of that, if I can.

Take care,
Sina

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Deegan [mailto:Tim.Deegan@xxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2008 5:12 AM
To: Sina Bahram
Cc: xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] Intercepting memory operations of a guest

At 01:15 -0500 on 07 Dec (1228612537), Sina Bahram wrote:
> #1: Is there anyway possible to trap/insert some code at/hook into, any
> modification of a PV guest's page table. Anything like a hypercall handler
I
> can plugin to, a function or series of functions that always gets called,
> something I can provide a call back to, or anything else?

PV guest pagetable modifications are made through the MMU hypercalls in
arch/x86/mm.c, and the ptwr functions.  Eventually, I believer they all
call down to adjust_guest_l*e() or alloc_l*_table().  Or, you could
enable shadow pagetables and intercept shadow_set_l*e() and
sh_destroy_l*_shadow() in arch/x86/mm/shadow/multi.c

Intercepting those points doesn't catch _every_ change to a guest
pagetable but it is guaranteed to catch changes that could be seen by
the hardware MMU.
 
> Also, would such activities be easier or more difficult with hvm guests?

If you're using shadow mode, then the interception points would be the
same.  For hap (aka NPT/EPT) I can't think of an easy way to intercept
pagetable changes. 

Cheers,

Tim.

-- 
Tim Deegan <Tim.Deegan@xxxxxxxxxx>
Principal Software Engineer, Citrix Systems (R&D) Ltd.
[Company #02300071, SL9 0DZ, UK.]


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