Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] xen/x86: Zero out .bss for PV guests

From: David Vrabel
Date: Wed Feb 24 2016 - 09:58:47 EST


On 24/02/16 14:52, Boris Ostrovsky wrote:
> On 02/24/2016 09:15 AM, Andrew Cooper wrote:
>> On 24/02/16 14:12, David Vrabel wrote:
>>> On 22/02/16 22:06, Boris Ostrovsky wrote:
>>>> Baremetal kernels clear .bss early in the boot. Since Xen PV guests
>>>> don't
>>>> excecute that early code they should do it too.
>>>>
>>>> (Since we introduce macros for specifying 32- and 64-bit registers we
>>>> can get rid of ifdefs in startup_xen())
>>> .bss must have been cleared for PV guests otherwise they would be
>>> horribly broken. What was the method and why is it no longer
>>> sufficient?
>
> I couldn't find this being done anywhere, hence this patch.
>
>> The domain builder hands out zeroed pages. I don't believe we guarantee
>> that the guests RAM is clean, but it is in practice.
>
> OK, that's what I suspected but didn't actually look.
>
> I, in fact, wonder whether this should go to stable trees as well.

Yes. Can you respin with a commit message explaining? (Or just provide
the message here and I'll fix it up).

David