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Re: [Xen-devel] question about memory allocation for driver domain



On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 10:31 AM, Julien Grall <julien.grall@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> On 07/02/2015 01:15, Oleksandr Tyshchenko wrote:
>>
>> Hi Julien
>
>
> Hi Oleksandr,
Hi Julien

>
>> On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 6:36 PM, Oleksandr Tyshchenko
>> Let me describe in detail about solution #3 before answer to your
>> question. Maybe I missed something in
>> the first mail. Also the Ian's answer clarified to me some points.
>> We don't have complete solution for now. We only have temporally
>> solution in which
>> we relied on assumptions which might or not be acceptable, but it
>> seems that the approach in general could work.
>> If it is true the our target is to rewrite/rework this stuff, to make
>> it more cleaner and correct from XEN point of view for platforms which
>> doesn't have a SMMU
>> even in the case where this stuff never reaches upstream.
>>
>> To run driver domain (domd) on OMAP5 platform with 1:1 mapping we did
>> next preparations:
>> (here I try to explain about memory allocation only, IRQ handling and
>> other things are out of scope for the current thread)
>> 1. Since the domd can use 128/256/512 Mb of RAM we modified existing
>> populate_guest_memory() in xc_dom_arm.c to allow to allocate
>> 128/256/512 Mb memory chunks.
>> 2. Since the default rambase (0x40000000) doesn't suitable for us for
>> some reasons:
>> - OMAP5 platform has memory mapped registers, starting from 0x4800000
>> - We have 2 guest domains (domd and domU) so it should be different
>> rambases for them
>> we added ability for toolstack to pass it via domain config file.
>
>
> While the overlapping is true on this Xen 4.5, we may decide to re-arrange
> the memory layout and put the GIC MMIOs on 0x4800000.
>
> A more generic solution would be to re-use the memory layout of the host. So
> a 1:1 mapping for MMIO and RAM would avoid overlapping with possible
> "virtual" region.
>
> I remembered to talk about it with Ian few months ago but we didn't have a
> practical use case at this time. FWIW, x86 has a similar solution via the
> e820_host param.
>
>
>> 3. Since for domd we need one contiguous chunk of memory we created a
>> new function allocate_domd_memory_11() in common/memory.c for the next
>> purposes:
>> - To allocate one contiguous memory chunk with specified order (as it
>> was done for dom0)
>> - To add this allocated chunk to the guest - domd (via
>> guest_physmap_add_page(), taking into account that mfn=gpfn)
>> 4. Since we need to allocate memory before any operation with it we
>> created hook for XENMEM_populate_physmap command. Here we relied on
>> the assumption
>> that the domain_id for domd is always 1 (it is not true after the domd
>> has been created again after destroying).
>> During first XENMEM_populate_physmap command we set is_privileged=true
>> and call allocate_domd_memory_11(),
>> during next commands - call populate_physmap() as a usual. The
>> is_domain_direct_mapped condition is a our case in populate_physmap().
>> I know that it is a very, very hacking solution). But, let's continue...
>>
>> How it works at the moment?
>> 1. Create domd with default rambase_pfn (0x80000000).
>> 2. See what the mfn we got in allocate_domd_memory_11().
>> 3. Set rambase_pfn=mfn in config file.
>> If the system configuration (N domains, domains memory, etc.) is not
>> changed, we will always get the same mfn. If we decided to change
>> something, for example, domd memory we need to repeat steps 2 and 3.
>> Yes, looks not good.
>>
>> How it should works?
>> The approach is to tailor the domd address map to the contiguous
>> region the allocator gives us. So, a guest rambase (gpfn) must based
>> on
>> mfn of a page we have allocated successfully. Without any manual actions.
>>
>> I think it must be done in next steps:
>> 1. Add a separate command, XENMEM_alloc_memory_11 or something similar
>> and it should be issued before call xc_dom_rambase_init() in
>> libxl_dom.c in case of presence
>> domd_memory_11 property in config file only. This should remove
>> terrible hook and anything related to d->domain_id=1 in
>> common/memory.c.
>> 2. Pass returned by XENMEM_alloc_memory_11 result to the
>> xc_dom_rambase_init().
>>
>> What are the advantages in compare with solution #1 and solution #2.
>> 1. There is no need to add standalone allocator or modifying existing.
>>
>> Let's return to your question about created/destroyed domd multiple times.
>> I have tried to do this with solution we have at the moment. I added
>> some modifications to allow me to destroy/create domd multiple times.
>> And I have seen that the allocator always returns the same page. This
>> means that the all memory allocated for domd have been returned to the
>> heap. Am I right?
>> Or perhaps did you mean that this may happens with the completed solution?
>
>
> It seems logical to me that destroy/create domd in a row working fine. But
> this use-case is too simple :).
>
> Let's imagine we decide to start classical domains (i.e no 1:1 mapping)
> before creating domd (the 1:1 domain). As the free memory may be sparsed,
> allocating one large RAM region may not work and therefore the domain
> allocation fail.
>
> On a similar idea, the host RAM may be split on multiple non-contiguous
> banks. In this case, the RAM size of the 1:1 domain cannot be bigger than
> the size of the bank. You will never know which bank is used, as IIRC, the
> allocator behavior change between debug and non-debug build.
> We had the same issue on DOM0 before the support of multiple banks has been
> added. It sounds like you may want multiple bank support for an upstream use
> case.
I understand the possible issue. I need to think about it.

>
> The next problem is ballooning. When the guest balloon out memory, the page
> will be freed by Xen and can be re-used by another domain.
>
> When guest balloon in, Xen will allocate a page (randomly) and therefore the
> mapping won't be anymore IPA (guest physical address) == PA (physical
> address). Any DMA request using this address will read/write data from wrong
> memory.
Is it possible to disable ballon driver for domd?

>
> The last problem but not the least is, depending on which backend you are
> running in the 1:1 domain (such blkback), grant won't be mapped 1:1 to the
> guest, so you will have to use swiotlb in order to use the right DMA
> address. For instance, without swiotlb, guest won't be able to use a disk
> partition via blkfront. This because the backend is giving directly the
> grant address to the block driver. To solve this, we have to use swiotlb and
> set specific DMA callback. For now, there are only used for DOM0.
We are using SWIOTLB for domd too.

>
> I think I've covered all the possible things you have to take care with 1:1
> mapping. Let me know if you need more information on some of them.

OK. Thank you.



>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Julien Grall



-- 

Oleksandr Tyshchenko | Embedded Dev
GlobalLogic
www.globallogic.com

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