Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] x86/domctl: Adjust size calculations for XEN_DOMCTL_get{_ext_vcpucontext, vcpuextstate}

["Jan Beulich" <JBeulich@xxxxxxxx>]

>>> On 28.04.14 at 12:59, <andrew.cooper3@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 28/04/14 11:34, Jan Beulich wrote:
>>>>> On 28.04.14 at 11:43, <andrew.cooper3@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> XEN_DOMCTL_get_ext_vcpucontext suffers from the same issue but while trying 
>>> to
>>> fix that in similar way, I discovered that it had a genuine bug when 
>>> returning
>>> the count of MSRs to the toolstack.  When running the hypercall on an active
>>> vcpu, the vcpu can arbitrarily alter the count returned to the toolstack by
>>> clearing and setting relevant MSRs.
>> Did you perhaps overlook the vcpu_pause() there?
> 
> There is a vcpu pause in the hypercall, so for the duration of the
> hypercall the returned value will be consistent.
> 
> However without the toolstack pausing the domain, issuing this hypercall
> twice, first to get the size and second to get the data might still
> result in -ENOBUFS if the vcpu suddenly writes non-0 values to the MSRs.

And in what way is this different from e.g. XEN_DOMCTL_get_vcpuextstate?

>> I'm also not really in favor of forcing the tools to allocate memory
>> for the array if in fact no MSRs are being used by the guest.
> 
> If there are no msrs to receive, then passing a NULL guest handle is
> still fine.

But the caller can't know whether the count was non-zero just because
that's the theoretical maximum or because some MSR really is in use.

Jan


_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xen.org/xen-devel