Re: [Qemu-devel] QEMU patch to allow VM introspection via libvmi

[Valerio Aimale <valerio@aimale.com>]

On 10/27/15 10:11 AM, Markus Armbruster wrote:
> [...]
>>>> Eduardo, I did try this approach. It takes 2 line changes in exec.c:
>>>> comment the unlink out, and making sure MAP_SHARED is used when
>>>> -mem-path and -mem-prealloc are given. It works beautifully, and
>>>> libvmi accesses are fast. However, the VM is slowed down to a crawl,
>>>> obviously, because each RAM access by the VM triggers a page fault on
>>>> the mmapped file. I don't think having a crawling VM is desirable, so
>>>> this approach goes out the door.
>>> Uh, I don't understand why "each RAM access by the VM triggers a page
>>> fault".  Can you show us the patch you used?
>> Sorry, too brief of an explanation. Every time the guest flips a byte in
>> physical RAM, I think that triggers a page write to the mmaped file. My
>> understanding is that, with MAP_SHARED, each write to RAM triggers a
>> file write, hence the slowness. These are the simple changes I made, to
>> test it - as a proof of concept.
> Ah, that actually makes sense.  Thanks!
>
> [...]
However, when the guest RAM mmap'ed file resides on a RAMdisk on the 
host, the guest OS responsiveness is more than acceptable. Perhaps this 
is a viable approach. It might requires a minimum of changes to the QEMU 
source and maybe 1 extra command line argument.