Hi Stefano,

On 31/08/2021 22:19, Stefano Stabellini wrote:

On Tue, 31 Aug 2021, Julien Grall wrote:

quoted

On 28/08/2021 01:05, Stefano Stabellini wrote:

quoted

On Fri, 27 Aug 2021, Oleksandr wrote:

quoted

On 07.08.21 01:57, Julien Grall wrote:

quoted

Hi Stefano,

On 06/08/2021 23:26, Stefano Stabellini wrote:

quoted

On Fri, 6 Aug 2021, Julien Grall wrote:

quoted

Hi Stefano,

On 06/08/2021 21:15, Stefano Stabellini wrote:

quoted

On Fri, 6 Aug 2021, Oleksandr Tyshchenko wrote:

quoted

Hello, all.

I would like to clarify some bits regarding a possible update
for
"Xen
device tree bindings for the guest" [1].

A bit of context:
We are considering extending "reg" property under the hypervisor
node and
we would like to avoid breaking backward compatibility.
So far, the "reg" was used to carry a single region for the
grant
table
mapping only and it's size is quite small for the new
improvement
we are currently working on.

What we want to do is to extend the current region [reg: 0] and
add
an
extra regions [reg: 1-N] to be used as a safe address space for
any
Xen specific mappings. But, we need to be careful about running
"new"
guests (with the improvement being built-in already) on "old"
Xen
which is not aware of the extended regions, so we need the
binding
to be
extended in a backward compatible way. In order to detect
whether
we are running on top of the "new" Xen (and it provides us
enough
space to
be used for improvement), we definitely need some sign to
indicate that.

Could you please clarify, how do you expect the binding to be
changed in
the backward compatible way?
- by adding an extra compatible (as it is a change of the
binding
technically)
- by just adding new property (xen,***) to indicate that "reg"
contains
enough space
- other option

     The current description is:

- reg: specifies the base physical address and size of a region in
      memory where the grant table should be mapped to, using an
      HYPERVISOR_memory_op hypercall [...]


Although it says "a region" I think that adding multiple ranges
would
be
fine and shouldn't break backward compatibility.

In addition, the purpose of the region was described as "where the
grant
table should be mapped". In other words, it is a safe address
range
where the OS can map Xen special pages.

Your proposal is to extend the region to be bigger to allow the OS
to
map more Xen special pages. I think it is a natural extension to
the
binding, which should be backward compatible.

I agree that extending the reg (or even adding a second region)
should
be fine
for older OS.

quoted

Rob, I am not sure what is commonly done in these cases. Maybe we
just
need an update to the description of the binding? I am also fine
with
adding a new compatible string if needed.

So the trouble is how a newer Linux version knows that the region is
big
enough to deal with all the foreign/grant mapping?

If you run on older Xen, then the region will only be 16MB. This
means
the
Linux will have to fallback on stealing RAM as it is today.

IOW, XSA-300 will still be a thing. On newer Xen (or toolstack), we
ideally
want the OS to not fallback on stealing RAM (and close XSA-300).
This is
where
we need a way to advertise it.

The question here is whether we want to use a property or a
compatible
for
this.

I am leaning towards the latter because this is an extension of the
bindings.
However, I wasn't entirely whether this was a normal way to do it.

May I please ask for the clarification how to properly advertise that we
have
extended region? By new compatible or property?

The current compatible string is defined as:

- compatible:
	compatible = "xen,xen-<version>", "xen,xen";
    where <version> is the version of the Xen ABI of the platform.


On the Xen side it is implemented as:

"xen,xen-"__stringify(XEN_VERSION)"."__stringify(XEN_SUBVERSION)"\0"


So in a way we already have the version in the compatible string but it
is just the Xen version, not the version of the Device Tree binding.


Looking at the way the compatible string is parsed in Linux, I think we
cannot easily change/add a different string format because it would
cause older Linux to stop initializing the Xen subsystem.

AFAICT, Linux doesn't care about extra compatible after "xen,xen". So in
theory we could write:

"xen,xen-<version>", "xen,xen", "xen,xen-v2".

Keep in mind that the generic compatible string ("xen,xen") is typically
last.

Ok. Even if it is written "xen,xen-<version>", "xen,xen-v2", "xen,xen". 
I still don't see the problem (see more below).

  Also we shouldn't rely on their ordering. Considering the definition

of hyper_node:


static __initdata struct {
	const char *compat;
	const char *prefix;
	const char *version;
	bool found;
} hyper_node = {"xen,xen", "xen,xen-", NULL, false};


And the following code:


	s = of_get_flat_dt_prop(node, "compatible", &len);
	if (strlen(hyper_node.prefix) + 3  < len &&
	    !strncmp(hyper_node.prefix, s, strlen(hyper_node.prefix)))
		hyper_node.version = s + strlen(hyper_node.prefix);


It looks like there is potential for breakage. For instance, It looks
like that hyper_node.version could end up being set to "xen,xen-v2"
depending on the success or failure of the first < len check. If not
"xen,xen-v2", I would guess that "xen,xen-version-2" would cause
hyper_node.version to be set to "version-2".

How so? s points to the beginning of the property. So if the if 
"xen,xen-4.16" is always first, there there is no way 
"hyper_node.version" can be set to "version-2".

If we were to introduce a new compatible we would need to make it so the
prefix "xen,xen-" does not match it. Something like "xen,api-v2" might
be possible.

I don't particularly care about the compatible name. This was an example 
to show that there is no issue with adding an extra compatible. I 
thought the compatible way was better because at least we don't have to 
add a new property every single time we extend the bindings.

However, the point of this conversation was to figure out whether the 
common way to extend the Device-Tree is to add a compatible or a new 
property. Not what we (Xen Project) prefer.

Cheers,

-- 
Julien Grall