14 Sep, 2018

1 commit

  • Scrubbing pages on initial balloon down can take some time, especially
    in nested virtualization case (nested EPT is slow). When HVM/PVH guest is
    started with memory= significantly lower than maxmem=, all the extra
    pages will be scrubbed before returning to Xen. But since most of them
    weren't used at all at that point, Xen needs to populate them first
    (from populate-on-demand pool). In nested virt case (Xen inside KVM)
    this slows down the guest boot by 15-30s with just 1.5GB needed to be
    returned to Xen.

    Add runtime parameter to enable/disable it, to allow initially disabling
    scrubbing, then enable it back during boot (for example in initramfs).
    Such usage relies on assumption that a) most pages ballooned out during
    initial boot weren't used at all, and b) even if they were, very few
    secrets are in the guest at that time (before any serious userspace
    kicks in).
    Convert CONFIG_XEN_SCRUB_PAGES to CONFIG_XEN_SCRUB_PAGES_DEFAULT (also
    enabled by default), controlling default value for the new runtime
    switch.

    Signed-off-by: Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
    Reviewed-by: Juergen Gross
    Signed-off-by: Boris Ostrovsky

    Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
     

27 Jul, 2018

1 commit

  • Memory {increase|decrease}_reservation and VA mappings update/reset
    code used in balloon driver can be made common, so other drivers can
    also re-use the same functionality without open-coding.
    Create a dedicated file for the shared code and export corresponding
    symbols for other kernel modules.

    Signed-off-by: Oleksandr Andrushchenko
    Reviewed-by: Boris Ostrovsky
    Signed-off-by: Boris Ostrovsky

    Oleksandr Andrushchenko