Re: Re: how to handle paged hypercall args?

[Olaf Hering <olaf@aepfle.de>]

On Thu, Nov 11, Keir Fraser wrote:

> On 11/11/2010 14:33, "Olaf Hering" <olaf@aepfle.de> wrote:
> 
> > So is that an acceptable way to deal with the HVMCOPY_gfn_paged_out
> > return codes from __hvm_copy?
> > Or should I explore some different way, like spinning there and possible
> > let other threads-of-execution make progress while waiting for the gfns
> > to come back?
> 
> You can't just spin because Xen is not preemptible. If it were a single CPU
> system for example, no other thread would ever run again. You have to 'spin'
> via a preemptible loop that returns to guest context and then back into the
> hypercall. Which appears to be what you're doing.

Thanks for the answer.

It occoured to me that this is an issue for hypercalls made by the
guest. There are probably not that many in use. So it shouldnt be that
hard to audit the few drivers what they use and add some error handling.
Up to now, only do_memory_op had an issue.


Olaf