[Xen-devel] 32bit PAE PV guest on 64bit hypervisor

[Mukesh Rathor <mukesh.rathor@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Been chasing down this message from guest boot:

(XEN) mm.c:1841:d1 Error pfn 7f36a: rd=ffff8300cea28080,
od=0000000000000000, caf=00000000, taf=0000000000000000
(XEN) mm.c:730:d1 Error getting mfn 7f36a (pfn 5555555555555555) from L1
entry 000000007f36a025 for dom1
(XEN) mm.c:3700:d1 ptwr_emulate: fixing up invalid PAE PTE
000000007f36a025

Firstly, on a >64GB system, looks like a 32bit guest can get mfn above 64G.

The above msg comes when the PV guest tries to do WP check. To that end,
it does set_pte for mapping a (some swapper) temp page in test_wp_bit():

      __set_fixmap(FIX_WP_TEST, __pa_symbol(&swapper_pg_dir), PAGE_READONLY);
      boot_cpu_data.wp_works_ok = do_test_wp_bit();
      clear_fixmap(FIX_WP_TEST);

...
/* use writable pagetables */
static inline void set_pte(pte_t *ptep, pte_t pte)
{
        ptep->pte_high = pte.pte_high;
        smp_wmb();
        ptep->pte_low = pte.pte_low;
}

During the clear fixmap, the pte high write results in clearing upper
32bits portion of pte/mfn, as a result the pte low write results in
hypervisor getting wrong mfn, 7f36a instead of 1f7f36a.

I understand writeable page tables allow guest to do this, but I assume
they are for mapping user and not kernel pages, in which case we should
be doing a hypercall here? Or, would switching the order, first set low pte
then high pte work?

Thanks,
Mukesh



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