Re: Re: Next steps with pv_ops for Xen

[Ian Main <imain@redhat.com>]

On Tue, 04 Dec 2007 12:39:59 +0000
"Stephen C. Tweedie" <sct@redhat.com> wrote:


> So... the interface (a) cannot be used on the Linux VM without at least
> one invasive VM modification, due to the requirement of ptes being
> explicitly unmapped via hypercall; and (b) isn't used significantly in
> real life yet.
> 
> I can't help wondering if this is a hint that now is the time to find a
> better API, which doesn't have the requirement (a) that seems to be
> causing such trouble?  Are other PV guests --- *BSD, Solaris --- going
> to have the same problems with their VM layers if they try to implement
> this API?  Upstream Linux pv_ops certainly will, and it would be good if
> we could avoid tying unprivileged guests to ABIs which cannot hope to be
> merged into pv_ops.

I posted up and said we were using the current interface, but if there are fundamental issues with the API then I'd be in favor of changing it, even
if there is some work involved on our side.

	Ian