Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] Provide HVM guest RTC change notification

["Christian Limpach" <christian.limpach@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 3/20/07, Ben Thomas <bthomas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> This patch restores the capabilities initially provided in
> changeset 10010.  When the RTC code was moved into the hypervisor
> (a good move), the control plane lost the ability to read the
> current time offset as well as to receive notification of changes
> to the RTC time base by a guest. This patch reintroduces these.
>
> Additionally, there is a small window at initialization time in
> which the time offset may be set but not noticed or used. If
> xc_domain_set_time_offset is called before the domain is started,
> the offset won't be noticed until the next second update. An HVM
> guest could read the RTC in this window and get an unintended
> result. This patch closes the window.
Isn't the "s->time_offset_seconds !=
s->pt.vcpu->domain->time_offset_seconds" condition an appropriate test
whether you need to call rtc_copy_date?

> The patch builds upon the existing change notification mechanism
> provided by VIRQ_DOM_EXC. I stopped short of renaming the
> releaseDomain watch to something like domainEvent as it wasn't
> clear who might be relying upon the existing name. A patch for
> that would be easy to create, though.
The domain exception virq is already quite overloaded as is and it
causes xend to do a quite expensive scan of all the domain
information.

I think using an ioreq to qemu would be a more appropriate mechanism
to signal that the guest has changed the timeoffset.  The ioreq would
include the delta by which the offset was changed.  qemu could then
update the timeoffset stored in xenstore, since we would want to make
the changed timeoffset persist across reboots.

   christian

> Last, the code introduced into qemu by 10010 is no longer really
> connected to anything and could be removed. It's found in
> tools/ioemu/patches/domain-timeoffset and can probably be excised
> at some suitable point. Currently, it's relatively harmless.
>
>
> Signed-off-by: Ben Thomas (ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ben Thomas                                         Virtual Iron Software
> bthomas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx                            Tower 1, Floor 2
> 978-849-1214                                       900 Chelmsford Street
>                                                    Lowell, MA 01851
>
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