Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH v3 01/24] xen: Extend DOMCTL createdomain to support arch configuration

[Ian Campbell <ian.campbell@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2015-01-13 at 14:25 +0000, Julien Grall wrote:
> On ARM the virtual GIC may differ between each guest (emulated GIC version,
> number of SPIs...). Those informations are already known at the domain 
> creation

"This information is already known at domain creation..."

> and can never change.
> 
> For now only the gic_version is set. In long run, there will be more 
> parameters

"In the long run".

> such as the number of SPIs. All will be required to be set at the same time.
> 
> A new arch-specific structure arch_domainconfig has been created, the x86
> one doesn't have any specific configuration, a dummy structure
> (C-spec compliant) has been created to factorize the code on the toolstack.

I'm not sure what you mean by factorize here.

> Some external tools (qemu, xenstore) may require to create a domain. Rather

"may be required" perhaps? I'm not 100% sure what you are trying to say.

> than asking them to take care of the arch-specific domain configuration, let
> the current function (xc_domain_create) to chose a default configuration and

s/to//

> introduce a new one (xc_domain_create_config).
> 
> This patch also drop the previously DOMCTL arm_configure_domain introduced

"drops the previously introduced DOMCTL arm...".

> in Xen 4.5, as it has been made useless.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Julien Grall <julien.grall@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Daniel De Graaf <dgdegra@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Ian Jackson <ian.jackson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Wei Liu <wei.liu2@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Stefano Stabellini <stefano.stabellini@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Keir Fraser <keir@xxxxxxx>
> Cc: Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: George Dunlap <george.dunlap@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> ---
>     This is a follow-up of 
> http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2014-11/msg00522.html
> 
>     TODO: What about migration? For now the configuration lives in internal
>     libxl structure. We need a way to pass the domain configuration to the
>     other end.

Things like the GIC version and number of SPIs would normally end up
being encoded in the hvm save records, i.e. the blob which Xen provides
to the toolstack to be included in the save stream. That would then be
alongside the actual related interrupt architectural state etc (e.g.
pending, active, masked etc).

That's problematic here because you can't pass that blob to the create
function and the toolstack cannot really parse the blob to figure out
the details to pass.

Looking back at msg00522.html it does seem like migration is a good
motivation for doing it as a separate hypercall as you originally did,
so initial create would be
        DOMCTL_create
        DOMCTL_set_the_variables
and restore would be
        DOMCTL_create
        DOMCTL_restore_from_blob

In both cases this needn't preclude requiring the call to be made before
unpause or that it is only called exactly once.

Write once HVM params would be another option here.

Jan, do you find any of that convincing as to the need for doing this
outside the the create domctl? Based on msg00522 is seems you would
prefer some HVM params over a new domctl?

>     I'm not sure if we should care of this right now as migration doesn't
>     yet exists on ARM.

It's a domctl so we aren't exactly painting ourselves into a corner, but
it would be good to have some idea that we aren't going down a blind
alley at least. Especially if the way out of the alley is to come back
to where we are now...

(There doesn't seem much point in looking at the code until we conclude
the approach is correct, so I haven't)

Ian.


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