Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH][v9 4/6] xen/hvm: Xen PV extension of HVM initialization

[Stefano Stabellini <stefano.stabellini@eu.citrix.com>]

On Mon, 15 Mar 2010, Sheng Yang wrote:
> > > +#ifdef CONFIG_XEN_HVM_PV
> > > +
> > > +#define XEN_HVM_PV_CLOCK_ENABLED   (1u<<  0)
> > 
> > Why is this flag needed?  As far as I understand it, there's no real
> > underlying hypervisor change needed to make HVM access to pv clock
> > possible; its just a field in the shared_info's vcpu struct after all.
> > Even if you enable this feature unconditionally, the user can still
> > control whether the Xen clocksource is used with the "clocksource="
> > kernel command-line parameter.
> 
> But we should make sure Xen have ability to support such kind of operation. 
> The CPUID would show if Xen have such ability, and if it does, the feature 
> would be enabled unconditionally. Guest kernel always enable all features it 
> can do unconditionally, but Xen should offer the support for them.
>  

In my opinion once the guest knows that is running on Xen HVM (that is
from xen_cpuid_base() or xen_para_available()) it should assume
that the pv clocksource is available, therefore XEN_HVM_PV_CLOCK_ENABLED
should not be needed.
In other words the mere presence of Xen should imply
XEN_HVM_PV_CLOCK_ENABLED.


> > Also, there's nothing about this which is 64-bit specific is there?
> 
> 64 bit things are mostly evtchn/interrupt related. I think no such limit here. 
> But I think it's better to do it step by step, so leave it after evtchn 
> solution settled.
> 

Do you mean write generic code now, then introduce the 64 bit
limitation later? Or the other way around?
I don't have a strong opinion here so I am OK with both approaches, but
I would prefer to add the limitation later (maybe we'll be able to make
it work on 32 bit too...).