Re: Introducing paravirt_ops for x86_64

From: Jeremy Fitzhardinge
Date: Thu Aug 09 2007 - 01:37:25 EST


Glauber de Oliveira Costa wrote:
> On 8/8/07, Nakajima, Jun <jun.nakajima@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Glauber de Oliveira Costa wrote:
>>
>>> Hi folks,
>>>
>>> After some time away from it, and a big rebase as a consequence, here
>>>
>> is
>>
>>> the updated version of paravirt_ops for x86_64, heading to inclusion.
>>>
>>> Your criticism is of course, very welcome.
>>>
>>> Have fun
>>>
>> Do you assume that the kernel ougtht to use 2MB pages for its mappings
>> (e.g. initilal text/data, direct mapping of physical memory) under your
>> paravirt_ops? As far as I look at the patches, I don't find one.
>>
>
> I don't think how it could be relevant here. lguest kernel does use
> 2MB pages, and it goes smootly. For 2MB pages, we will update the page
> tables in the very same way, and in the very places we did before.
> Just that the operations can now be overwritten.
>
> So, unless I'm very wrong, it only makes sense to talk about not
> supporting large pages in the guest level. But it is not a
> paravirt_ops problem.
>

At the moment Xen can't support guests with 2M pages. In 32-bit this
isn't a huge problem, since the kernel doesn't assume it can map itself
with 2M pages. But I think the 64-bit kernel assumes 2M pages are
always available for mapping the kernel. I don't know how pervasive
this assumption is, but it would be nice to parameterize it in pv-ops.


J
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