From: Wei Liu <wei.liu2@citrix.com>
To: Jan Beulich <JBeulich@suse.com>,
Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com>
Cc: Xen-devel <xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org>,
Wei Liu <wei.liu2@citrix.com>
Subject: Make hvm_fep available to non-debug build as well?
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:47:22 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20160614104722.GH28116@citrix.com> (raw)
Andrew and I had a short conversation on IRC about why hvm_fep is only
available to debug build. Here is what he said:
<andyhhp> liuw: because hvm_fep puts a very large attack surface back
into the hypervisor
<andyhhp> I intoduced it originally to make it easy to test the
instruction emulator without requiring a race condition between two
vcpus
<andyhhp> so I guess paranoia is the underlying answer to your question
<andyhhp> there is nothing wrong in principle with making available in
non-debug builds
I think I agree with him that in principle it should be possible to
make hvm_fep available to non-debug build. Andrew also suggested a
sync_console style warning, which I think makes sense.
If hvm_fep is enabled, we also should not provide any security support,
because the attack surface is widen. That should be reflected in the
warning message.
I think there is one major benefit for making hvm_fep available to
non-debug build: user can replicate the exact setup in production and
use XTF to test if it is vulnerable to various issues.
My own reason for having hvm_fep for non-debug builds is that would make
integrating it with osstest much easier, and possibly require less
resources from osstest.
I want XTF to run on every flight and gate xen-unstable. Remember that
we switch from debug to non-debug build at some point during release
process -- if hvm_fep is only available to debug build, that would
require some more arrangement to run such tests. We also essentially
test less for non-debug build, which is not very desirable.
Thoughts?
Wei.
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next reply other threads:[~2016-06-14 10:47 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2016-06-14 10:47 Wei Liu [this message]
2016-06-14 10:54 ` Make hvm_fep available to non-debug build as well? Jan Beulich
2016-06-14 11:36 ` Andrew Cooper
2016-06-15 14:16 ` Wei Liu
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