Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 2/2] domain: use PGC_extra domheap page for shared_info

[Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>]

On 06.03.2020 13:20, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Fri, 2020-03-06 at 12:37 +0100, Jan Beulich wrote:
>>> For live update we need to give a region of memory to the new Xen which
>>> it can use for its boot allocator, before it's handled any of the live
>>> update records and before it knows which *other* memory is still
>>> available for use.
>>>
>>> In order to do that, the original Xen has to ensure that it *doesn't*
>>> use any of that memory region for domain-owned pages which would need
>>> to be preserved.
>>>
>>> So far in the patches I've posted upstream I have cheated, and simply
>>> *not* added them to the main heap. Anything allocated before
>>> end_boot_allocator() is fine because it is "ephemeral" to the first Xen
>>> and doesn't need to be preserved (it's mostly frame tables and a few
>>> PTE pages).
>>>
>>> Paul's work is making it possible to use those pages as xenheap pages,
>>> safe in the knowledge that they *won't* end up being mapped to domains,
>>> and won't need to be preserved across live update.
>>
>> I've started looking at the latest version of Paul's series, but I'm
>> still struggling to see the picture: There's no true distinction
>> between Xen heap and domain heap on x86-64 (except on very large
>> systems). Therefore it is unclear to me what "those pages" is actually
>> referring to above. Surely new Xen can't be given any pages in use
>> _in any way_ by old Xen, no matter whether it's ones assigned to
>> domains, or ones used internally to (old) Xen.
> 
> Hm, I'm not sure my previous response actually answered your question;
> sorry, I've been away all week so it's still Monday morning in my head
> right now. Let me try again...
> 
> What I said just now is true. The new Xen can use anything that isn't
> actually owned by domains, but old Xen is dead and any of its own
> internal allocations, Xen page tables and data structures (i.e. most of
> what it allocated on its xenheap) have died with it and those pages are
> considered 'free' by the new Xen.
> 
> Theoretically, it would be possible for the new Xen to go directly to
> that state. The live update data could be processed *early* in the new
> Xen before the boot allocator is even running, and new Xen could prime
> its boot allocator with the memory ranges that happen to be available
> according to the criteria outlined above.
> 
> Our initial implementation did that, in fact. It was complex in early
> boot, and it didn't scale to more than 512 separate free ranges because
> the boot allocator panics if it has more free regions than that.
> 
> That's why we settled on the model of reserving a specific region for
> the new Xen to use for its boot allocator. Old Xen promises that it
> won't put anything into that region that needs to be preserved over
> kexec, and then the startup process for the new Xen is much simpler; it
> can use that contiguous region for its boot allocations and then
> process the live update data in a better environment once things like
> vmap() are already available Then *finally* it can add the rest of the
> system memory that *isn't* used by running domains, into the buddy
> allocator.
> 
> So this requires old Xen to promise that it *won't* put anything into
> that region of reserved bootmem (aka "those pages"), that needs to be
> preserved across kexec. That promise is *mostly* equivalent to "will
> only allocate xenheap pages from those pages"... except for the fact
> that sometimes we allocate a page from the xenheap and share it to
> domains.
> 
> Thus, "don't do that then", and THEN we can say that it's OK for
> xenheap allocations to come from the reserved bootmem region, but not
> domheap allocations.

Oh, so really this is an optimization to allow the memory range to
not remain unused altogether by "old" Xen, i.e. unlike the kexec
range. And of course this means you're intending to (at least
partially) resurrect the distinction between domheap and xenheap,
which isn't said anywhere in Paul's series, I don't think. If this
is a sufficiently correct understanding of mine, then on one hand
I start seeing the point of the conversion Paul wants to make, but
otoh this then feels a little like making the 2nd step before the
1st.

Jan

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