Re: [XEN PATCH] tools/misc: xen-hvmcrash: Inject #DF instead of overwriting RIP

[Matthew Barnes <matthew.barnes@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 10:02:42PM +0100, Andrew Cooper wrote:
> On 03/06/2024 3:59 pm, Matthew Barnes wrote:
> > xen-hvmcrash would previously save records, overwrite the instruction
> > pointer with a bogus value, and then restore them to crash a domain
> > just enough to cause the guest OS to memdump.
> >
> > This approach is found to be unreliable when tested on a guest running
> > Windows 10 x64, with some executions doing nothing at all.
> >
> > Another approach would be to trigger NMIs. This approach is found to be
> > unreliable when tested on Linux (Ubuntu 22.04), as Linux will ignore
> > NMIs if it is not configured to handle such.
> >
> > Injecting a double fault abort to all vCPUs is found to be more
> > reliable at crashing and invoking memdumps from Windows and Linux
> > domains.
> 
> Why every CPU?
> 
> We never did that before, and I don't see any it ought to be necessary
> now either.

We do: at the moment, xen-hvmcrash iterates through
hvm_save_descriptors after pausing the domain, overwriting the EIP/RIP of
each cpu it finds.

Is there a reason not to inject #DF into each domain vCPU? Wouldn't that
crash the domain more reliably?

> > diff --git a/tools/misc/xen-hvmcrash.c b/tools/misc/xen-hvmcrash.c
> > index 1d058fa40a47..8ef1beb388f8 100644
> > --- a/tools/misc/xen-hvmcrash.c
> > +++ b/tools/misc/xen-hvmcrash.c
> > @@ -38,22 +38,21 @@
> >  #include <sys/stat.h>
> >  #include <arpa/inet.h>
> >  
> > +#define XC_WANT_COMPAT_DEVICEMODEL_API
> 
> Please don't introduce this.  We want to purge it from the codebase, not
> propagate it.
> 
> You want to open and use a libxendevicemodel handle.  (Sadly you also
> need a xenctrl handle too, until we sort out the userspace ABIs).
> 
> >  #include <xenctrl.h>
> >  #include <xen/xen.h>
> >  #include <xen/domctl.h>
> >  #include <xen/hvm/save.h>
> >  
> > +#define X86_ABORT_DF 8
> 
> #include <xen/asm/x86-defns.h>
> 
> and use X86_EXC_DF.

Understood: this will be reflected in patch v2.

Matt