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    SubjectRe: [RFC] Unify KVM kernel-space and user-space code into a single project
    On 03/24/2010 03:46 PM, Joerg Roedel wrote:
    > On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 03:05:02PM +0200, Avi Kivity wrote:
    >
    >> On 03/24/2010 02:50 PM, Joerg Roedel wrote:
    >>
    >
    >>> I don't want the tool for myself only. A typical perf user expects that
    >>> it works transparent.
    >>>
    >> A typical kvm user uses libvirt, so we can integrate it with that.
    >>
    > Someone who uses libvirt and virt-manager by default is probably not
    > interested in this feature at the same level a kvm developer is. And
    > developers tend not to use libvirt for low-level kvm development. A
    > number of developers have stated in this thread already that they would
    > appreciate a solution for guest enumeration that would not involve
    > libvirt.
    >

    So would I. But when I weigh the benefit of truly transparent
    system-wide perf integration for users who don't use libvirt but do use
    perf, versus the cost of transforming kvm from a single-process API to a
    system-wide API with all the complications that I've listed, it comes
    out in favour of not adding the API.

    Those few users can probably script something to cover their needs.

    >> Someone needs to know about the new guest to fetch its symbols. Or do
    >> you want that part in the kernel too?
    >>
    > The samples will be tagged with the guest-name (and some additional
    > information perf needs). Perf userspace can access the symbols then
    > through /sys/kvm/guest0/fs/...
    >

    I take that as a yes? So we need a virtio-serial client in the kernel
    (which might be exploitable by a malicious guest if buggy) and a
    fs-over-virtio-serial client in the kernel (also exploitable).

    >>> Depends on how it is designed. A filesystem approach was already
    >>> mentioned. We could create /sys/kvm/ for example to expose information
    >>> about virtual machines to userspace. This would not require any new
    >>> security hooks.
    >>>
    >> Who would set the security context on those files?
    >>
    > An approach like: "The files are owned and only readable by the same
    > user that started the vm." might be a good start. So a user can measure
    > its own guests and root can measure all of them.
    >

    That's not how sVirt works. sVirt isolates a user's VMs from each
    other, so if a guest breaks into qemu it can't break into other guests
    owned by the same user.

    The users who need this API (!libvirt and perf) probably don't care
    about sVirt, but a new API must not break it.

    >> Plus, we need cgroup support so you can't see one container's guests
    >> from an unrelated container.
    >>
    > cgroup support is an issue but we can solve that too. Its in general
    > still less complex than going through the whole libvirt-qemu-kvm stack.
    >

    It's a tradeoff. IMO, going through qemu is the better way, and also
    provides more information.

    >> Integration with qemu would allow perf to tell us that the guest is
    >> hitting the interrupt status register of a virtio-blk device in pci
    >> slot 5 (the information is already available through the kvm_mmio
    >> trace event, but only qemu can decode it).
    >>
    > Yeah that would be interesting information. But it is more related to
    > tracing than to pmu measurements.
    > The information which you mentioned above are probably better
    > captured by an extension of trace-events to userspace.
    >

    It's all related. You start with perf, see a problem with mmio, call up
    a histogram of mmio or interrupts or whatever, then zoom in on the
    misbehaving device.

    --
    error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function



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