Re: Re: [PATCH] switch to a known good/static GDT before kexec

[Keir Fraser <keir.fraser@eu.citrix.com>]

On 02/07/2009 10:18, "Keir Fraser" <keir.fraser@eu.citrix.com> wrote:

>> switch to a known good/static GDT before kexec
>> 
>> kexec has been failing (at least on 32on64, didn't try others) since
>> 18771:8e18dd41c6c7 "x86: reduce GDT switching". Ensure that we are
>> using a known good GDT before attempting to switch to compatability mode.
> 
> I thought 18771 still left us always running on a good GDT, as least as far
> as Xen's own limited needs are concerned. I'd like this in for 3.4.1 of
> course, but I'd also like to understand why the fix is required (and whether
> this is the best fix).

Jan,

Thinking about this raises another question. Since your patch to allow
arbitrary numbers of VCPUs per domain, does the GDT logic in
__context_switch() work any more? What if you have a next vcpu n for which
!need_full_gdt(n) but where its domain does not have a vcpu_id as large as
p->vcpu_id? Won't you end up with a GDTR pointing at a non-existent mapping
('off the end' of n->domain's per-domain mappings)?

 -- Keir