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Re: [Xen-devel] Xen ARM small task (WAS: Re: [Xen Question])





On 21/11/2016 21:13, Edgar E. Iglesias wrote:
On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 01:01:15PM -0800, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
On Mon, 21 Nov 2016, Edgar E. Iglesias wrote:
On Fri, Nov 18, 2016 at 10:58:42AM -0800, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
On Thu, 17 Nov 2016, Julien Grall wrote:
Hi Stefano,

On 17/11/2016 11:26, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
On Mon, 14 Nov 2016, Julien Grall wrote:
On 11/11/2016 13:55, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
On Fri, 11 Nov 2016, Julien Grall wrote:
On 11/11/2016 02:24, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
On Thu, 10 Nov 2016, Julien Grall wrote:
(CC Stefano and change the title)
On 10/11/16 12:13, casionwoo wrote:
I’m pleased about your reply and you have a lot of code to
clean-up.

As you mentioned, It’s really huge to digest at once. Thank you
for
understanding me.

And that’s why i need a small fix up and todo list.

I feel familiar with ARM and c language and there’s no specific
area
yet.

I think that i can find interesting area with following up the
codes.

I’m looking forward to being stuck on Xen.

Then it would be easier for me to understand about Xen on ARM.

Please let me know the TODO and bug-fix lists.

Stefano, before giving a list of code clean-up, do you have any
small
TODO
on
ARM in mind?

A simple task we talked about recently is to enable the vuart
(xen/arch/arm/vuart.c) for all guests. At the moment it is only
emulated
for Dom0, but some guests, in particular BareMetal guests
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BareMetal), would benefit from it.

It would be best to introduce an option in libxl to explicitly
enable/disable the vuart for DomUs. Something like vuart=1 in the VM
config file.

The vuart has not been enabled for DomU because it the UART region may
clash
with the guest memory layout (which is static).

I don't think this option should be available until we allow the guest
to
use
the same memory layout as the host (see e820_host parameter for x86).

Actually there is no reason for the vuart to use the same address as
the physical uart on the platform, is there?
In fact it doesn't even
have to prentend to be the same uart as the one on the board, right?
The vuart MMIO address could be completely configurable and independent
from the one of the physical uart.

There is no reason to use the same information as the physical UART.

However, the vuart requires quite a few information (e.g base address,
offset
of different register... see vuart_info structure in include/xen/serial.h
for
more details) in order to fully work.

IHMO this is a lot of works for the user to configure. I would much prefer
to
see a PL011 emulated at a specific base address and let the user select
whether he wants a UART to debug or not.

So you envision the configuration of the MMIO base address to be done as
part of a new dynamic guest memory map?

For guest using dynamic memory map, I would expect to expose an uncompleted
emulation of the physical UART (e.g it would only be possible to write) at the
exact same address as on the host.

Why? Is this a requirement for baremetal guests?

I would have actually opted for always emulating a PL011 even for guests
using a dynamic memory map (which of course one way or another need to
be able to choose the address of the UART, the memory and the rest).

I guess it's not black and white but trying to reduce the gap towards
being able to run unmodified SW for a given platform as a guest would
be nice.

Some times things are quite relaxed and we can recompile the SW for Xen,
add new drivers etc. Other times perhaps SW has been certified and users
may not be able to change anything.

For apps where the UARTs are only used for console data, vuarts at
configurable locations would be nice IMO.

All right, so I take that same UART as baremetal is easier than always
PL011?

I think so, yes.

To comply with the SBSA, depending on the guest, we'll probably need to allow 
for optional emulation of pl011 though...

Having a flexible setup so that vm.cfgs can instantiate vuarts or emulated 
pl011 at specific addresses, that sounds good to me.

I am more in favor to have a different approach depending on the memory layout (static vs dynamic) of the guest.

Exposing the vuart to a guest with static memory layout is overly complex (you have a bunch information to configure) and it is much easier to require a guest using pl011 (implementing a small driver for it is very easy). Note that the emulation could just use the vuart for now. But the user would just have to say pl011 = true in the vm.cfg.

For the emulated pl011, I would not support user configuration (e.g address) when using the static memory layout for similar reason as above. Only dynamic layout could support an extend configuration. Even though, I am not convince of the usefulness of a pl011 for baremetal app (we are supposed to only emulate the hardware).

Regards,

--
Julien Grall

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