Re: [kvm-devel] [PATCH][RFC] pte notifiers -- support for externalpage tables

[Avi Kivity]

Rusty Russell wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-09-05 at 22:32 +0300, Avi Kivity wrote:
>   
> > [resend due to bad alias expansion resulting in some recipients
> >  being bogus]
> >
> > Some hardware and software systems maintain page tables outside the normal
> > Linux page tables, which reference userspace memory.  This includes
> > Infiniband, other RDMA-capable devices, and kvm (with a pending patch).
> >     
>
> And lguest.  I can't tell until I've actually implemented it, but I
> think it will seriously reduce the need for page pinning which is why
> only root can currently launch guests.
>
>   

Ah yes, lguest.

> My concern is locking: this is called with the page lock held, and I
> guess we have to bump the guest out if it's currently running.
>   

This will complicate kvm's locking too.  We usually take kvm->lock to do 
mmu ops, but that is now a mutex.


--
Any sufficiently difficult bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

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