Re: [Xen-devel] Paravirtualization of the "HLT" instruction (for example) on x386

[Ian Brown <ianbrn@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

First, thanks Keir for your answer.

>The point of paravirtualization is that such instructions are replaced
>with explicit traps to the hypervisor in the OS.
>Emulation of the raw instruction is not required.

I had thought again about your answer and after probing the code
and IA32 manuals I am not sure I understood you fully and correctly.

I tried to look for such privileged instructions in the guest OS code
(for IA32)
which are replaced with explicit traps to the hypervisor and didn't find.

I know that CLTS and WBINVD instructions, for example , should cause
#GP(0) if run from CPL which is not 0; but grepping for an asm instruction
which calls CLTS or WBINVD under the sparse tree gives no results.

Can you give one example for such an instruction which cause a trap
to the hypervisor when run in a guest OS and where in the code it causes
such a trap ?

(As far as I understand,if we try to issue a privilege instruction from
CPL1 we should get a #GP(0) and reach the general protection
handler in sparse/arch/xen/i386/kernel/traps.c , do_general_protection().

But I had looked at do_general_protection() in
sparse/arch/xen/i386/kernel/traps.c
and could not find there a mechanism which will trap to the hypervisor;maybe
I had totally missed the point?)


Regards,

IB

On 1/12/06, Keir Fraser <Keir.Fraser@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 12 Jan 2006, at 09:27, Ian Brown wrote:
>
> > So I tried to find where in the Xen-3.0 code it is done.
> > I saw in vmx.c the vmx_vmexit_do_hlt() method ,which is called
> > when "HLT" is performed,  but this is relevant when running a
> > platform with VT-x.
> > I am looking for tracing where this handling or modifying of
> > the HLT instruction is done in a usual x386 (non-VTX) processor.
> >
> > Can anybody please point where in the code of Xen 3.0 this is done
> > (for x86 processors)?
>
> The point of paravirtualizetion is that such instructions are replaced
> with explicit traps to the hypervisor in the OS. Emulation of the raw
> instruction is not required.
>
> In fact we do emulate some privileged instructions, just not HLT.
>
>   -- Keir
>
>

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