[Xen-devel] libvirt: [PATCH] libxl: Check for control_d string to decide about dom0

[Stefan Bader <stefan.bader@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have been looking into a bug report (see BugLink) which reported
libvirt to fail starting inside a Xen guest. Upon further investigation
I found that some tools that help monitoring Xen guests will mount
xenfs to /proc/xen. This will create a capabilities files there even
if the guest is not dom0. However it will return nothing when reading
from it.

Ian, just to sanity check myself. I looked at the xenfs code and to
me there only seem to be those two outcomes (either "control_d" for
running in dom0 or notrhing if not).

With the following patch applied, libvirt starts up correctly in
the normal guests (with xenfs mounted) without initializing libxl.
And also in dom0 where it still enables the libxl driver (if the
xl toolstack is selected).

-Stefan

From f11949caca6dfe1a802472a2a6d4fe760115ccc6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Stefan Bader <stefan.bader@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 11:37:16 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] libxl: Check for control_d string to decide about dom0

As soon as any guest mounts xenfs to /proc/xen, there is a capabilities
file in that directory. However it returns nothing when reading from it.
Change the test to actually check the contents of the file.

BugLink: http://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1248025

Signed-off-by: Stefan Bader <stefan.bader@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
 src/libxl/libxl_driver.c |   14 ++++++++++++--
 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/libxl/libxl_driver.c b/src/libxl/libxl_driver.c
index 65d80a2..844e828 100644
--- a/src/libxl/libxl_driver.c
+++ b/src/libxl/libxl_driver.c
@@ -944,6 +944,7 @@ libxlDriverShouldLoad(bool privileged)
     bool ret = false;
     virCommandPtr cmd;
     int status;
+    char *output = NULL;
 
     /* Don't load if non-root */
     if (!privileged) {
@@ -951,8 +952,17 @@ libxlDriverShouldLoad(bool privileged)
         return ret;
     }
 
-    /* Don't load if not running on a Xen control domain (dom0) */
-    if (!virFileExists("/proc/xen/capabilities")) {
+    /*
+     * Don't load if not running on a Xen control domain (dom0). It is not
+     * sufficient to check for the file to exist as any guest can mount
+     * xenfs to /proc/xen.
+     */
+    status = virFileReadAll("/proc/xen/capabilities", 10. &output);
+    if (status >= 0) {
+        status = strncmp(output, "control_d", 9);
+    }
+    VIR_FREE(output);
+    if (status) {
         VIR_INFO("No Xen capabilities detected, probably not running "
                  "in a Xen Dom0.  Disabling libxenlight driver");
 
-- 
1.7.9.5


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