Re: [PATCH 2/2] xen: Introduce VM_EVENT_FLAG_SET_EIP

[Razvan Cojocaru <rcojocaru@bitdefender.com>]

On 09/16/2015 06:57 PM, Tamas K Lengyel wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 5:19 AM, Razvan Cojocaru
> <rcojocaru@bitdefender.com <mailto:rcojocaru@bitdefender.com>> wrote:
> 
>     A previous version of this patch dealing with support for skipping
>     the current instruction when a vm_event response requested it
>     computed the instruction length in the hypervisor, adding non-trivial
>     code dependencies. This patch allows a userspace vm_event client to
>     simply request that the guest's EIP is set to an arbitary value,
>     computed by the introspection application.
> 
> 
> So in my opinion this patch introduces a feature that is not strictly
> tied to emulation related vm_event paths. I could use this feature to
> update the instruction pointer any time we respond to a vm_event and
> furthermore, it may be benefitial to expand the scope of which registers
> can be updated this way. For example, I have tools that update not just
> the instruction pointer but also the stack pointer and registers used to
> pass function inputs. Since we already send a snapshot of select
> registers to the user with each event, we could introduce a response
> flag that indicates that all registers included in that snapshot should
> be set to the values sent back by the user. The user then could choose
> which registers need to be updated in bulk.
> 
> What do you think?

Hello Tamas, thanks for the reply!

Yes, I thought it might come up that this doesn't have to be
emulation-specific, but thought I'd hitch it there since I've assumed
that at the moment this is the only case where it's actually used.

I have nothing in principle against having a SET_REGISTERS flag instead
of a SET_EIP one, but I am unsure of how (and where) that would be best
implemented. What do you have in mind? A handler similar to void
vm_event_register_write_resume() where we set these registers for the
respective vcpu? Is this even possible at vm_event response handling time?


Thanks,
Razvan