Re: hardwired VMI crap

Ingo Molnar
2007-03-08T21:14:58Z

* Zachary Amsden <zach@vmware.com> wrote:

> When we're about two weeks away from a product release and you are
> threatening to unmerge or block our code because we didn't create an
> abstract interrupt controller, we re-used the APIC and IO-APIC, this
> is uber rocket science. [...]

see my mail to you below: you've been told about the clockevents problem
months ago, that you shouldnt hardwire PIT details and that you should
be registering a clockevents device. You cannot credibly claim that you
didnt know about this.

> We've been doing things this way, with public patches for over a year,
> and you've even been CC'd on some of the discussions. [...]

i've specifically objected, numerous times - the result of which was
that when you submitted it to lkml you didnt Cc: me ;) The VMI crap went
in 'under the radar' via the x86_64 tree.

> [...] So it is a little late to tell us - "redesign your hypervisor,
> or else.."

Also, it was /you/ who claimed that paravirt_ops can take care of
whatever design change on the Linux side - that claim is apparently
history now and you are now claiming "there's a product on the road, we
cannot change the hypervisor ABI"? Should i cite that email of yours
too?

Ingo

----------------->
Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2007 06:45:04 +0100
From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
To: Zachary Amsden <zach@vmware.com>
Subject: Re: Clockevent changes in -mm tree
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>, Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>,
Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>

* Zachary Amsden <zach@vmware.com> wrote:

> So I'm running into some issues integrating the VMI timer code with
> the clockevent code in the -mm tree. Basically, my question is - are
> clockevents now required to get the timer infrastructure to work
> properly, and can I have multiple clockevent sources (to allow
> overriding the PIT) that are selected at boot time?

(I've Cc:-ed Rusty too, the author of the paravirtualization patches.
Rusty, what's your take on the VMI timer patchset of Zach?)

in any case, i dont see any fundamental problem here. The right model
for timer paravirtualization is to notify the guest during early bootup
that this is a paravirtual bootup. Then the guest doesnt even register
the PIT clocksource but registers the virtual clock-events driver.

Ingo