Re: [kvm-devel] [PATCH][RFC] KVM: prepare user interface for smpguests

From: Avi Kivity
Date: Mon Oct 30 2006 - 04:09:09 EST


Arnd Bergmann wrote:
Separating the objects into different file descriptors sounds like a
good idea, but reusing an open dentry/inode with a new file and different
file operations is a rather unusual way to do it.

Yes, it doesn't feel right.

Your concept of allocating
a new context on each open is already weird, but there have been other
examples of that before.

Actually that seemed to me quite natural.

I'd suggest going to a syscall-based model with your own file system right
away, even if you don't use the spufs approach but something in the middle:

* You do a trivial nonmountable new file system with anonymous objects,
similar to eventpollfs, and hand out file descriptors to inodes in it,
for both the kvm and the vcpu objects.
* You replace the syscall you'd normally use to hand out a new kvm instance
with an ioctl on /dev/kvm, and don't allow any other operations on that
device.

This would be a much more consistant object model, compared with other
generic kernel functionality that is not bound to an actual device.
You still have all the flexibility of a loadable module without core
kernel changes for the development phase, and can easily switch to real
syscalls when merging it into mainline.

I agree, that sounds like a good plan. I'll look into it.

BTW, what does lsof show for spufs users? I thought lsof /dev/kvm would be a good way to look for virtual machines.


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

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