Re: [Xen-devel] [hybrid] : mmap pfn space...

[Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 2012-04-14 at 02:47 +0100, Mukesh Rathor wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:37:46 +0100
> Stefano Stabellini <stefano.stabellini@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > I think that we should explicitly allocate these pages/addresses and
> > not rely on the fact that they are at a specific location that we deem
> > safe for now.
> > So if we explicitly introduce a new region at the end of the e820 that
> > we mark as reserved and we use it for this, I would be OK with that.
> > However we need to be careful because editing the e820 has proved to
> > be challenging in the past.
> > Also we would need to figure out a way to tell Linux that these
> > reserved addresses are actually OK to be used. Maybe we need a new
> > command line or hypercall for that.
> 
> That sounds like reasonable approach. Lets do it as part of phase II.
> I wanna get some basic code in.
> 
> So, to give an update of where I am, good news, I've got guests 
> finally booting using hybrid dom0. So, that means I am almost there 
> now!!!! Yeay...

Awesome news!

> But, the pfn space management for privcmd mapping is still a hack. 
> Running into many issues. Basially, it is forcing me to write a slab
> allocator for the resvd pfn space, that I am trying to avoid. During
> guest creation, xl process maps about 10k foreign pgs, and xenstored 1.

10k simultaneously or over the life of a domain build?

> I was thinking of just dividing my pfn space into say 10 chunks, each
> with 10k pages, so 10 guest creations can happen simultaneously. But,
> then xl is not the only process doing the mapping I found out. xenstored
> also needs to map domU frames. Otherwise, I could just do one chunk
> per process. Also, I am breaking mmap semantics somewhat by hooking
> via privcmd_mmap, because the unmaps don't follow any order. So my last
> unmap frees the entire 10k chunk it's using. 

Presumably that's mostly just an issue of doing more accounting/tracking
in the privcmd driver (like the gntdev device does) so you can properly
release things at the right time/place?

> In a nutshell, I am still trying to figure how to allocate rsvd pfn's 
> for privcmd without writing a slab allocator.

Can't you just use the core get_page function (or
alloc_xenballooned_pages) and move the associated mfn aside temporarily
(or not if using alloc_xenballooned_pages)?

>  I think using mmap makes
> it harder, can't we just use ioctl to get the VA? Then, I could nicely
> do something like:
>   xl: 
>     - open(privcmd file)
>     - ioctl(get rsvd/e820 pfn handle)
>     - ioctl(get VA using above handle) /* alternate to mmap */
>     - ioctl(get VA1 using above handle) /* alternate to mmap */
>     ...
>     - ioctl(release handle)
>     - ioctl(release VA)
>     - close file
> 
> Is that an option (to change mmap to ioctl)? 
> 
> Hope that makes sense,
> 
> thanks,
> Mukesh
> 



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