[vbox-dev] Accessing guest memory from the vBox host

[Sander van Leeuwen]

  On 8/18/2010 7:42 AM, Glenn Tremblay wrote:
>
> I am new to vbox development/architecture and would like to understand 
> my options in accessing guest memory from the vbox host side. I am 
> running a Windows guest in a vbox VM with vbox running on top of 
> CentOS. The windows guest contains a proprietary I/O driver that 
> generates requests from 4k to 64k in size. Ideally I'd like to pass 
> down the virtual/physical address and length to vbox on the host and 
> them map the buffer into the host's memory space for access by a 
> vbox/linux driver.  The host driver must be able to read and write the 
> guest I/O buffer. Also ideally these buffer addresses will potentially 
> be different for each I/O buffer to be mapped -- although I could get 
> away with a fixed mapped region and copy the buffer to that 
> preallocated shared region every time if necessary.
>
> So my questions are:
>
> 1) What are my options for mapping any portion of guest address space 
> to host accessible address space? And unmap it when done.
>
Two options:
1) create a virtual device that reads and writes from/to guest memory; 
you can map guest memory into host memory, but that is generally discouraged
2) create a virtual device that maps an associated MMIO range into guest 
memory (our VGA device does that)

> 2) Are there any memory address limitations? (e.g. guest address range 
> must be < 4 GB)
>
None.

> 3) Is there any existing vbox code I study that utilizes this type of 
> guest memory/buffer access?
>
The existing virtual devices. There's a very basic sample device in 
src/VMM/Devices/Samples, but you can look at any of the others for more 
info.

Sander

> Thanks in advance for any assistance anyone can provide,
>
> Glenn
>
>
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