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Re: [Xen-devel] xm mem-max and mem-set



Ky Srinivasan wrote:
It appears that these commands (and code backing these commands) do no
sanity checking and could potentially get the system to crash if the
values picked are not appropriate. For instance one can set the mem-max
value to a value that appears reasonable and basically render the
machine unusable. Consider the case where max value being set is less
than what is currently allocated to the domain. All subsequent
allocations will fail and these failures are considered fatal in Linux
(look at hypervisor.c). Once the domain is up, does it even make sense
to lower the max_mem parameter without risking crashing the system?
Minimally, we should ensure that the mem_max value is at least equal to
what the current domain allocation is. I have a trivial patch to xen
that implements this logic. This patch fixes a bug we have in our
bugzilla against SLES10. Would there be interest in such a patch.

I'm slightly concerned about the subtle race condition it would introduce. If there's no reason to set max-mem below current reservation (if it causes crashes which I don't really understand why it would) then I think it would be something best enforced within the hypervisor.

Why, exactly, would setting max-mem below the current reservation cause problems in the guest? I guess it may fail because of grant transfer ops (in which case, we really ought to enforce it at the hypervisor level).

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

Regards,

K. Y



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