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From: Nathan Lynch <ntl@pobox•com>
To: Oren Laadan <orenl@cs•columbia.edu>
Cc: containers@lists•osdl.org, linuxppc-dev@ozlabs•org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/3] powerpc: bare minimum checkpoint/restart implementation
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:03:55 -0600	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20090217010355.58afd5cf@thinkcentre.lan> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20090129214035.GB6913@localdomain>

Nathan Lynch <ntl@pobox•com> wrote:
>
> Oren Laadan wrote:
> > 
> > Nathan Lynch wrote:
> > > 
> > > What doesn't work:
> > > * restarting a 32-bit task from a 64-bit task and vice versa
> > 
> > Is there a test to bail if we attempt to checkpoint such tasks ?
> 
> No, but I'll add one if it looks too hard to fix for the next round.

Unfortunately, adding a check for this is hard.

The "point of no return" in the restart path is cr_read_mm, which tears
down current's address space.  cr_read_mm runs way before cr_read_cpu,
which is the only restart method I've implemented for powerpc so far.
So, checking for this condition in cr_read_cpu is too late if I want
restart(2) to return an error and leave the caller's memory map
intact.  (And I do want this: restart should be as robust as execve.)

Well okay then, cr_read_head_arch seems to be the right place in the
restart sequence for the architecture code to handle this.  However,
cr_write_head_arch (which produces the buffer that cr_read_head_arch
consumes) is not provided a reference to the task to be checkpointed,
nor can it assume that it's operating on current.  I need a reference
to a task before I can determine whether it's running in 32- or 64-bit
mode, or using the FPU, Altivec, SPE, whatever.

In any case, mixing 32- and 64-bit tasks across restart is something I
eventually want to support, not reject.  But the problem I've outlined
applies to FPU state and vector extensions (VMX, SPE), as well as
sanity-checking debug register (DABR) contents.  We'll need to be able
to error out gracefully from restart when a checkpoint image specifies a
feature unsupported by the current kernel or hardware.  But I don't see
how to do it with the current architecture.  Am I missing something?

  parent reply	other threads:[~2009-02-17  7:04 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 28+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2009-01-28 22:41 [RFC/PATCH 0/3] checkpoint/restart for powerpc Nathan Lynch
2009-01-28 22:41 ` [PATCH 1/3] powerpc: bare minimum checkpoint/restart implementation Nathan Lynch
2009-01-29  6:41   ` Oren Laadan
2009-01-29 21:40     ` Nathan Lynch
2009-01-30  0:11       ` Oren Laadan
2009-01-30 20:25         ` Nathan Lynch
2009-02-17  7:03       ` Nathan Lynch [this message]
2009-02-17 20:02         ` [PATCH 1/3 v2] powerpc: heckpoint/restart implementation Nathan Lynch
2009-02-24 19:58         ` [PATCH 1/3] powerpc: bare minimum checkpoint/restart implementation Serge E. Hallyn
2009-02-24 21:11           ` Nathan Lynch
2009-03-13  3:36             ` Oren Laadan
2009-03-13  3:31         ` Oren Laadan
2009-03-13 15:42           ` Cedric Le Goater
2009-03-16 18:37           ` Nathan Lynch
2009-03-17  6:55             ` Cedric Le Goater
2009-03-18  9:15               ` Oren Laadan
2009-01-30  4:01     ` Serge E. Hallyn
2009-01-30  3:55   ` Serge E. Hallyn
2009-02-04  3:39   ` Benjamin Herrenschmidt
2009-02-04 15:54     ` Serge E. Hallyn
2009-02-04 20:58       ` Benjamin Herrenschmidt
2009-02-04 23:44         ` Oren Laadan
2009-02-05  0:16           ` Benjamin Herrenschmidt
2009-02-05  3:30             ` Oren Laadan
2009-02-05 16:09             ` Serge E. Hallyn
2009-02-05 21:01               ` Benjamin Herrenschmidt
2009-01-28 22:41 ` [PATCH 2/3] powerpc: wire up checkpoint and restart syscalls Nathan Lynch
2009-01-28 22:41 ` [PATCH 3/3] allow checkpoint/restart on powerpc Nathan Lynch

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