Re: [PATCH v3 04/12] Add "handle page fault" PV helper.

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Wed Jan 20 2010 - 12:48:39 EST


On 01/20/2010 02:02 AM, Gleb Natapov wrote:

You can have the guest OS take an exception on a vector above 31 just
fine; you just need it to tell the hypervisor which vector it, the OS,
assigned for this purpose.

VMX doesn't allow to inject hardware exception with vector greater then 31.
SDM 3B section 23.2.1.3.


OK, you're right. I had missed that... I presume it was done for implementation reasons.

I can inject the event as HW interrupt on vector greater then 32 but not
go through APIC so EOI will not be required. This sounds non-architectural
and I am not sure kernel has entry point code for this kind of event, it
has one for exception and one for interrupts that goes through __do_IRQ()
which assumes that interrupts should be ACKed.

You can also just emulate the state transition -- since you know you're dealing with a flat protected-mode or long-mode OS (and just make that a condition of enabling the feature) you don't have to deal with all the strange combinations of directions that an unrestricted x86 event can take. Since it's an exception, it is unconditional.

-hpa
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