Re: [GIT PULL] xen /proc/mtrr implementation

From: Ingo Molnar
Date: Mon May 18 2009 - 04:59:49 EST



* Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> It's not really virtualized. We're talking about dom0, which is
> the guest domain which has access to the real machine's real
> hardware; the MTRR is part of that.

That is a really broken model and design of virtualization:
splitting the hypervisor into Xen and then a separate Linux dom0
entity because reality called home a few years ago and you needed
actual working drivers and hardware support and a developer
community to pull that off ...

Here Xen invades an already fragile piece of upstream code
(/proc/mtrr) that is obsolete and on the way out. If you want a
solution you should add PAT support to Xen and you should use recent
upstream kernels. Or you should emulate /proc/mtrr in _Xen the
hypervisor_, if you really care that much - without increasing the
amount of crap in Linux.

Without a better reason than what you've given so far the answer is
really: "no thanks" ...

My suspicion is that Linus would (rightfully) refuse to pull such a
broken approach from me, so why should i pull it? If i'm wrong and
if you can get an Acked-by from Linus _before_ sending a pull
request we can override my NAK. I've Cc:-ed him, in case he wants to
express an opinion.

Ingo
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