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Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 2 of 2] xl, libxl: Add per-device and global permissive config options for pci passthrough



On 02/04/12 16:20, Ian Jackson wrote:
George Dunlap writes ("[Xen-devel] [PATCH 2 of 2] xl, libxl: Add per-device and 
global permissive config options for pci passthrough"):
+By default pciback only allows PV guests to write "known safe" values into
+PCI config space.  But many devices require writes to other areas of config
+space in order to operate properly.  This tells the pciback driver to
+allow all writes to PCI config space for this domain and this device.  This
+option should be enabled with caution, as there may be stability or security
+implications of doing so.
Is this security warning not overly mealy-mouthed ?  Surely it should
be more definite.
I'm not sure how we can make it more definite. What's possible (i.e., the security implications) entirely depends on the card; and what's likely (i.e., the stability implications) entirely depends on the card and the driver. Short of giving a short discourse on the vices of various cards PCI config space (which is entirely inappropriate for a man page, IMHO), I'm not sure what more we can say.
+Changes the default value of 'permissive' for all PCI devices for this
+VM.  This can still be overriden on a per-device basis. See the
+"pci=" section for more information on the "permissive" flag.
And this should mention it as well I think.
I thought it was unnecessary to duplicate, but I can do so if you prefer.

+                LIBXL__LOG_ERRNO(ctx, LIBXL__LOG_ERROR, "write to %s returned 
%d",
Please keep the lines to 75-80 characters at most.
Ack.

I think you should consider breakibg out the sysfs writing function
and refactoring with the very similar code in libxl__device_pci_reset,
rather than introducing yet another clone.
I shall consider it. :-)

 -George

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