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Re: [Xen-devel] Is: PVH - how to solve maxmem != memory scenario? Was:Re: [PATCH] libxl: create PVH guests with max memory assigned



>>> On 05.08.14 at 16:48, <konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 05, 2014 at 03:36:19PM +0100, Jan Beulich wrote:
>> >>> On 05.08.14 at 16:18, <konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > Mukesh's feeling was that it is an PV.
>> > 
>> > I believe George is the opinion of 'HVM' without the device model.
>> 
>> I think we settled already that this is the intended long term model.
>> However, what's wrong with having the kernel act PV-like on top of
>> a PoD-based hypervisor implementation. Simply not touching the
>> memory amount beyond the initial allocation would already make
>> things work afaict, i.e. even without any decrease-reservation
>> calls (and it would therefore desirable but mostly cosmetic to get
>> them done as early as possible).
> 
> Linux sets its page-tables (beyound the bootstrap) using an interesting
> mechanism which ends up touching those pages.
> 
> Bear with the explanation as it is a bit complex.
> 
> When it setups page-tables for a new range of memory (1GB
> or 2MB, or 4KB ranges - in PVH it will likely be in 2GB
> since the 1GB cpuid parameter is not exposed), it ends up
> populating the L2, L3, and L4 (as needed) from the earlier
> range. When it is done with this range (say 2MB), it will
> put the page table entries in the physical area of the newly
> added region.
> 
> Something like this:
> 
>     +--------------------------------------+                     
>     |                                      v                     
>     |   2MB region------------->|<------  2MB region ---------->
> +---+------+--------------------+----------+--------------------+
> |          |                    |          |                    |
> |pgtable   |                    |pgtable   |                    |
> +----------+--------------------+----------+--------------------+
> 
> 
> In effect the pages beyound 'memory' will be touched during bootup.

I don't think that's how it works, as this wouldn't leave any
contiguous 2M pages for allocation. I think the block sizes are
much larger, and what memblock_find_in_range() returns isn't
necessarily always from the most recently added block I'd
suppose.

Jan


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