Re: NMI deferral on i386

[Keir Fraser <keir@xensource.com>]

Well, this sounds fine to me. If you port it I'll apply it. I would prefer
it as a separate patch from the rest of the MCA/MCE changes really, but if
that's a pain then don't worry about it.

 -- Keir

On 21/5/07 15:34, "Jan Beulich" <jbeulich@novell.com> wrote:

> The idea is to always check values read from %ds and %es against
> __HYPERVISOR_DS,
> and only store into the current frame (all normal handlers) or the outer-most
> one (NMI and MCE) if the value read is different. That way, any NMI or MCE
> occurring during frame setup will store selectors not saved so far on behalf
> of
> the interrupted handler, with that interrupted handler either having managed
> to read the guest selector (in which case it can store it regardless of
> whether
> NMI/MCE kicked in between the read and the store) or finding __HYPERVISOR_DS
> already in the register, in which case it'll know not to store (as the nested
> handler would have done the store).
> 
> For the restore portion this makes use of the fact that there's exactly one
> such code sequence, and by moving the selector restore part past all other
> restores (including all stack pointer adjustments) the NMI/MCE handlers can
> safely detect whether any selector would have been restored already (by
> range checking EIP) and move EIP back to the beginning of the selector
> restore sequence without having to play with the stack pointer itself or any
> other gpr.