GSoC'20 Interested Student: Adding support to Jailhouse Hypervisor

PRAKHAR BANSAL prakharbansal0910 at gmail.com
Tue Mar 31 15:45:36 UTC 2020


Hi Jan,

I have shared the draft proposal link with libvirt on GSoC's system.
Could you please check and provide your feedback, if possible.

Thanks,
Prakhar

On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 1:47 AM Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka at web.de> wrote:

> On 31.03.20 04:43, PRAKHAR BANSAL wrote:
> > Hi Jan,
> >
> > Thanks for the confirmation to proceed on project proposal.
> >
> > Also, I tried installing Jailhouse on my VM after enabling VT-x/EPT and
> > IOMMU for my VM(Guest OS- Ubuntu 18.04) on VMware fusion hypervisor with
> > MacOS on the host side.
> > However,  Jailhouse hardware check was failed because of missing
> > *Preemption timer and Virtualize APIC access*, could you please suggest,
> > if this is hardware limitation?  Is there any workaround here?
>
> You will need a hypervisor that supports both when nesting, but I have
> no idea if there is one for the Mac. What is known to work is KVM on
> Linux hosts.
>
> > My laptop's processor is Intel quad-core i7.
> >
> > image.png
> >
> > Also, could you please suggest, if I can talk to you through an IRC or
> > slack channel since it is a bit hard to communicate over email every
> time.
>
> I'll be listening on #jailhouse, irc.freenode.net.
>
> Jan
>
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Prakhar
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 6:15 AM Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka at web.de
> > <mailto:jan.kiszka at web.de>> wrote:
> >
> >     On 30.03.20 10:02, PRAKHAR BANSAL wrote:
> >      > Hi Jan,
> >      >
> >      > On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 4:12 AM Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka at web.de
> >     <mailto:jan.kiszka at web.de>
> >      > <mailto:jan.kiszka at web.de <mailto:jan.kiszka at web.de>>> wrote:
> >      >
> >      >     On 28.03.20 08:47, PRAKHAR BANSAL wrote:
> >      >      > Hi Jan,
> >      >      >
> >      >      > Thanks for the reply!
> >      >      >
> >      >      > I was only considering the command-line tool "code" for
> >     reference
> >      >     to the
> >      >      > Jailhouse kernel API(ioctl calls) because I didn't find a
> >      >     documentation
> >      >      > of the Jailhouse kernel APIs.
> >      >
> >      >     Right, the IOCTL API is not documented so far. It is
> >     currently only used
> >      >     inside the Jailhouse project. This needs to be formalized
> >     when there
> >      >     shall be external users like a libvirt driver.
> >      >
> >      >     That might be a nice small contribution task: Create some
> >      >     Documentation/driver-interfaces.md that describes the IOCTLs
> >     along with
> >      >     their parameter structures and that also includes the current
> >      >     sysfs-entries.txt as a section. Then send this as patch here.
> >     I'll help
> >      >     out when details are not clear from reading the code.
> >      >
> >      > Sure. I will do that.
> >      >
> >      >      >
> >      >      > For the second part as you mentioned that Jailhouse can
> >     only create
> >      >      > cells with the constraints defined in the root cell
> >     configuration. I
> >      >      > have a few questions regarding that.
> >      >      >
> >      >      > 1. Is there a way to know if Jailhouse is enabled on the
> >     host and get
> >      >      > the root cell configuration(s) from Jailhouse through an
> API?
> >      >     This can
> >      >      > be used while binding the libvirt to the Jailhouse
> hypervisor.
> >      >
> >      >     Look at
> >      >
> >
> https://github.com/siemens/jailhouse/blob/master/Documentation/sysfs-entries.txt
> >      >     for what is reported as runtime information. Full
> >     configurations can't
> >      >     be read back at this point. This might be reconsidered in the
> >     light of
> >      >     [1], but I wouldn't plat for that yet.
> >      >
> >      >
> >      > Ok, sure. I am looking into it.
> >      >
> >      >
> >      >      >
> >      >      > 2. If Jailhouse is not enabled(again can we know this
> >     using some API)
> >      >      > then, can libvirt enable/disable Jailhouse during the
> libvirt
> >      >     binding of
> >      >      > the Jailhouse driver with a given set of Jailhouse cell
> >      >     configurations
> >      >      > describing a complete partitioned system?
> >      >
> >      >     With the API above and a given configuration set, yes. The
> >     config set
> >      >     would have to be provided to the libvirt driver in some
> >     to-be-defined
> >      >     way (e.g. /etc/libvirt/jailhouse.conf ->
> >     /etc/libvirt/jailhouse/*.cell).
> >      >
> >      > Cool, got it. Thanks!
> >      >
> >      >      >
> >      >      > 3. I was wondering, as you mentioned that libvirt driver
> >     should check
> >      >      > for mismatch of the cell configuration with the root cell
> >      >     configuration,
> >      >      > the question is, isn't that done by Jailhouse itself? If
> >     yes, then
> >      >      > libvirt can just pass on the cell creation requests to
> >     Jailhouse and
> >      >      > return the response to the user as it is, rather than
> driver
> >      >     doing any
> >      >      > such mismatch check.
> >      >
> >      >     With matching I'm referring to a libvirt user request like
> >     "create a
> >      >     domain with 2 CPUs", while there are no cells left that have
> >     more than
> >      >     one CPU. Or "give the domain 1G RAM", and you need to find an
> >     available
> >      >     cell with that much memory. Those are simple examples. A
> >     request that
> >      >     states "connect the domain to the host network A" implies
> >     that a cell
> >      >     has a shared-memory link to, say, the root cell that can be
> >     configured
> >      >     to bridge this. But let's keep that for later and start as
> >     simple as
> >      >     possible.
> >      >
> >      >
> >      > Do I need to match the libvirt user-requested cell config with
> >     only root
> >      > cells or with all cells present at that time?
> >
> >     With all non-root cells - the root cell will be occupied already (it
> >     runs libvirt e.g.).
> >
> >      >
> >      > I wanted to request you for a favor for the proposal as the
> >     deadline is
> >      > approaching. Could I prepare a proposal for this project based on
> our
> >      > discussion here and improve it later based on feedback comments
> after
> >      > the deadline? I understand that I got late in starting on the
> project
> >      > search and selection.
> >
> >     Sure, please go ahead.
> >
> >     Jan
> >
> >      >
> >      > Thanks,
> >      > Prakhar
> >      >
> >      >
> >      >     Jan
> >      >
> >      >     [1]
> >      >
> >
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/jailhouse-dev/CADiTV-1QiRhSWZnw%2BkHhJMO-BoA4sAcOmTkQE7ZWbHkGh3Jexw%40mail.gmail.com
> >      >
> >      >      >
> >      >      > -Prakhar
> >      >      >
> >      >      > On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 1:49 AM Jan Kiszka
> >     <jan.kiszka at web.de <mailto:jan.kiszka at web.de>
> >      >     <mailto:jan.kiszka at web.de <mailto:jan.kiszka at web.de>>
> >      >      > <mailto:jan.kiszka at web.de <mailto:jan.kiszka at web.de>
> >     <mailto:jan.kiszka at web.de <mailto:jan.kiszka at web.de>>>> wrote:
> >      >      >
> >      >      >     Hi Prakhar,
> >      >      >
> >      >      >     On 25.03.20 05:36, PRAKHAR BANSAL wrote:
> >      >      >      > Hi Jan,
> >      >      >      >
> >      >      >      > Thanks for the reply. I looked deeper into the
> >     libvirt and
> >      >     Jailhouse
> >      >      >      > source code and found following two things that seem
> >      >     relevant to the
> >      >      >      > project I am interested in.
> >      >      >      >
> >      >      >      > - Libvirt driver interface at [libvirt.git]
> >      >      >      >
> >     <https://libvirt.org/git/?p=libvirt.git;a=tree;hb=HEAD> / src
> >      >      >      >
> >      >     <https://libvirt.org/git/?p=libvirt.git;a=tree;f=src;hb=HEAD
> > /
> >      >      >     driver.h
> >      >      >      >
> >      >      >
> >      >
> >       <
> https://libvirt.org/git/?p=libvirt.git;a=blob_plain;f=src/driver.h;hb=HEAD
> >
> >      >      >      > - Jailhouse tool, which is using the ioctl API of
> the
> >      >     Jailhouse,
> >      >      >      > available at
> >      >      >      >
> >      >
> https://github.com/siemens/jailhouse/blob/master/tools/jailhouse.c.
> >      >      >      >
> >      >      >      > With the help of the above two, it looks like, a
> >     libvirt
> >      >     driver
> >      >      >     for the
> >      >      >      > Jailhouse can be implemented. Let me know if I am
> >     moving
> >      >     in the right
> >      >      >      > direction so far.
> >      >      >
> >      >      >       From the Jailhouse perspective, it is important to
> not
> >      >     consider the
> >      >      >     command line tool an interface anymore (like in the
> first
> >      >     prototype) but
> >      >      >     build on top of the Linux driver API (ioctls, sysfs).
> >     There
> >      >     is already a
> >      >      >     Python library which started to abstract this
> >     interface for
> >      >      >     Jailhouse-internal use cases. However, I strongly
> suspect
> >      >     libvirt will
> >      >      >     rather want a native binding.
> >      >      >
> >      >      >      >
> >      >      >      > I have been looking at the other libvirt driver
> >      >     implementations for
> >      >      >      > hypervisors like HyperV and VMware to understand
> their
> >      >     implementation
> >      >      >      > and learn from there.
> >      >      >
> >      >      >     As Jailhouse is a static partitioning hypervisor
> without
> >      >     abstraction of
> >      >      >     the underlying hardware, your starting point for the
> >     libvirt
> >      >     binding
> >      >      >     should be a given set of Jailhouse cell configurations
> >      >     describing a
> >      >      >     complete partitioned system. So rather than
> >     instantiating on
> >      >     demand a
> >      >      >     domain (Jailhouse cell) with, say, a network adapter,
> the
> >      >     driver should
> >      >      >     match a user request for a domain against the
> >     configuration
> >      >     set and use
> >      >      >     what is there - or report the mismatch. What it could
> >      >     organize, though,
> >      >      >     is interconnecting cells that have a (preconfigured)
> >     virtual
> >      >     network
> >      >      >     link to the root cell.
> >      >      >
> >      >      >     Due to this different concept, there will be no 1:1
> >     mapping for
> >      >      >     commodity hypervisor drivers to the Jailhouse scenario.
> >      >     Still, studying
> >      >      >     what they do is useful and needed in order to
> >     understand what
> >      >     "normally"
> >      >      >     happens and find a reasonable translation. This is
> >     probably
> >      >     the most
> >      >      >     challenging part of the project.
> >      >      >
> >      >      >     Jan
> >      >      >
> >      >
> >
>
>
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