Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH v5 2/3] x86: Remap GDT tables in the Fixmap section

[Thomas Garnier <thgarnie@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 1:46 PM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 1:43 PM, Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@xxxxxxxxxx> 
> wrote:
>> On 09/03/2017 21:32, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>>> On Mon, Mar 6, 2017 at 2:03 PM, Thomas Garnier <thgarnie@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>>> --- a/arch/x86/xen/enlighten.c
>>>> +++ b/arch/x86/xen/enlighten.c
>>>> @@ -710,7 +710,7 @@ static void load_TLS_descriptor(struct thread_struct 
>>>> *t,
>>>>
>>>>         *shadow = t->tls_array[i];
>>>>
>>>> -       gdt = get_cpu_gdt_table(cpu);
>>>> +       gdt = get_cpu_gdt_rw(cpu);
>>>>         maddr = arbitrary_virt_to_machine(&gdt[GDT_ENTRY_TLS_MIN+i]);
>>>>         mc = __xen_mc_entry(0);
>>> Boris, is this right?  I don't see why it wouldn't be, but Xen is special.
>>
>> Under Xen PV, the GDT is already read-only at this point.  (It is not
>> safe to let the guest have writeable access to system tables, so the
>> guest must relinquish write access to the frames wishing to be used as
>> LDTs or GDTs.)
>>
>> The hypercall acts on the frame, not a virtual address, so either alias
>> should be fine here.
>>
>> Under this new scheme, there will be two read-only aliases.  I guess
>> this is easier to maintain the split consistently across Linux, than to
>> special case Xen PV because it doesn't need the second alias.
>>
>
> I think we would gain nothing at all by special-casing Xen PV -- Linux
> allocates the fixmap vaddrs at compile time, so we'd still allocate
> them even if we rejigger all the helpers to avoid using them.
>

I don't have any experience with Xen so it would be great if virtme can test it.

I can remove the unused functions, I just thought they were useful
shortcuts given some of them are already used.

> --Andy



-- 
Thomas

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