Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH for-4.5 0/6] libxl: events: Tear down fd interests when idle

[Ian Jackson <Ian.Jackson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Konrad: here is a set of fixes for libxl which ought IMO to be in 4.5.
See below, or the rest of the thread, for details.  It's broken up
into 6 tiny patches for ease of review.

Ian Jackson writes ("[PATCH for-4.5 0/6] libxl: events: Tear down fd interests 
when idle"):
> If libxl_event_register_callbacks is called with nonzero hooks while
> any part of libxl has any fd interests registered internally, then:
> 
>  * There is no way for libxl to notify the application that it wants
>    to be told about these fds, because the spec in the doc comment
>    says that the new hooks are not called for existing interests.
> 
>  * When libxl becomes no longer interested, it will try to find the
>    nexus for the deregistration hook.  But such a nexus is only set up
>    with nonzero hooks, so libxl will dereference NULL.
> 
>  * Specifically, since 66bff9fd492f, libxl would unconditionally
>    become interested in its event channel fd during setup.  So if the
>    application sets nontrivial hooks it will always crash in
>    libxl_ctx_free.  (This case reported as a bug by Ian Campbell.)
> 
> To fix this, it would be nice to simply forbid `late' registration of
> event hooks.  But this would be an incompatible API changel.  And
> indeed libvirt already registers event hooks after using the ctx to
> create a domain (!)
> 
> So instead we add the minimum workable restriction: hooks can (only)
> be registered when libxl is idle.
> 
> To do this we need to:
>  * Defer registration of fds until they are needed.
>  * Deregister fds again as they become idle.
> There is no need to do anything about timeouts because an idle libxl
> already never has any timeouts.
> 
> In this series I add defensive assertions.  This is a good idea
> because violations of the rules typically produce crashes anyway, but
> distant from the cause.
> 
> 
> This series should be included in Xen 4.5:
> 
> The evtchn fd issue is new in 4.5 - that is, we have a regression
> since 4.4.  It causes libvirt to segfault.
> 
> But even in 4.4 there are potential bugs, with symptoms such as the
> libxl watch fd not being properly registered, so that operations are
> unreasonably delayed, or crashes on ctx teardown.  So after these
> patches make it into 4.5 master the relevant subset should probably be
> backported.

Thanks,
Ian.

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