[Xen-devel] p2m stuff and crash tool

[Daniel Kiper <daniel.kiper@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey Juergen,

As I saw you are strongly playing with p2m stuff, so,
I hope that you can enlighten me a bit in that area.

OVM, Oracle product, uses as dom0 kernel Linux 3.8.13
(yep, I know this is very ancient stuff) with a lot of
backports. Among them there is commit 2c185687ab016954557aac80074f5d7f7f5d275c
(x86/xen: delay construction of mfn_list_list). After
an investigation I discovered that it breaks crash tool.
It fails with following message:

crash: read error: kernel virtual address: ffff88027ce0b700  type: 
"current_task (per_cpu)"
crash: read error: kernel virtual address: ffff88027ce2b700  type: 
"current_task (per_cpu)"
crash: read error: kernel virtual address: ffff88027ce4b700  type: 
"current_task (per_cpu)"
crash: read error: kernel virtual address: ffff88027ce6b700  type: 
"current_task (per_cpu)"
crash: read error: kernel virtual address: ffff88027ce10c64  type: "tss_struct 
ist array"

Addresses and symbols depends on a given build.

The problem is that xen_max_p2m_pfn in xen_build_mfn_list_list()
is equal to xen_start_info->nr_pages. This means that memory
which is above due to some remapping/relocation (usually it is
small fraction) is not mapped via p2m_top_mfn and p2m_top_mfn_p.
I should mention here that Xen is started with e.g. dom0_mem=1g,max:1g.
If I remove max argument then crash works because xen_max_p2m_pfn
is greater than xen_start_info->nr_pages. Additionally, the issue
could be fixed by replacing xen_max_p2m_pfn in xen_build_mfn_list_list()
with max_pfn.

After that I decided to take a look at Linux kernel upstream. I saw
that xen_max_p2m_pfn in xen_build_mfn_list_list() is equal to "the
end of last usable machine memory region available for a given
dom0_mem argument + something", e.g.

For dom0_mem=1g,max:1g:

(XEN) Xen-e820 RAM map:
(XEN)  0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
(XEN)  000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
(XEN)  00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
(XEN)  0000000000100000 - 000000007ffdf000 (usable)   <--- HERE
(XEN)  000000007ffdf000 - 0000000080000000 (reserved)
(XEN)  00000000b0000000 - 00000000c0000000 (reserved)
(XEN)  00000000feffc000 - 00000000ff000000 (reserved)
(XEN)  00000000fffc0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
(XEN)  0000000100000000 - 0000000180000000 (usable)

Hence xen_max_p2m_pfn == 0x80000

Later I reviewed most of your p2m related commits and I realized
that you played whack-a-mole game with p2m bugs. Sadly, I was not
able to identify exactly one (or more) commit which would fix the
same issue (well, there are some which fixes similar stuff but not
the same one described above). So, if you explain to me why
xen_max_p2m_pfn is set to that value and does not e.g. max_pfn then
it will be much easier for me to write proper fix and maybe fix
the same issue in upstream kernel if it is needed (well, crash
tool does not work with new p2m layout so first of all I must fix it;
I hope that you will help me to that sooner or later).

Additionally, during that work I realized that p2m_top (xen_p2m_addr
in latest Linux kernel) and p2m_top_mfn differs. As I saw p2m_top
represents all stuff (memory, missing, identity, etc.) found in PV
guest address space. However, p2m_top_mfn is just limited to memory
and missing things. Taking into account that p2m_top_mfn is used just
for migration and crash tool it looks that it is sufficient. Am I correct?
Am I not missing any detail?

Daniel

PS I am sending this to wider forum because I think that it
   is worth spreading knowledge even if it is not strictly
   related to latest Xen or Linux kernel developments.

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