[vbox-dev] Fwd: Explanation about Ring0 context

[Luca Carotenuto]

Hi Frank,
thanks for your precise answer.
At this point, there is only two things I don't get:

1) callback functions for E1000 (e.g. e1kRegWriteTDT()), are executed
in R0 context (or at least this is what Log says), but I can find the
relative
symbols only in VBoxDD.so (which is related to R3), and not in VMMR0.r0.
How is that possible?

2) Since I'm writing some code for a new networking driver (for my
University),
how can I tell the compiler "compile and run this code in R0, compile and
run that code in R3"?

I hope I was clear enough.

Kind regards,
Luca

2016-02-02 10:18 GMT+01:00 Frank Mehnert <frank.mehnert at oracle.com>:

> Hi Luca,
>
> device emulation code in VirtualBox can run within three contexts:
>
> * R3 (part of VBoxDD): Normal userland code executed in the VM
>   process context. This code is executed each time we leave the
>   guest and go back to userland. This code is not that performance-
>   critical, e.g. device initialization, memory allocation etc.
>
> * R0 (part of VMMR0): Code which is executed in kernel context.
>   This happens if the VM runs in VT-x/AMD-V mode and we left the
>   VM and entered the root mode where the VirtualBox VMM runs
>   (next to the host OS kernel). For performance reasons we don't
>   switch to userland (R3). The amount of R0 code is much smaller
>   than the amount of R3 code. Such code can also call host OS
>   kernel functions directly (e.g. submit a network IP packet to
>   the host OS network layer). Calling the host OS code from VMMR0
>   is usually done using SUPR0* functions which are implemented in
>   src/VBox/HostDrivers/Support and runtime functions which are
>   implemented in src/VBox/Runtime/r0drv
>
> * RC/GC (part of VMMRC.rc): This code is executed if the VM runs
>   in non VT-x/AMD-V mode (legacy). Only 32-bit code. This code is
>   part of the hypervisor which runs in R0 in the context of the
>   guest process. The guest itself runs at R1 (guest userland as
>   R3 as usual). Google should explain you x86 ring compression.
>
> Of course R3 code cannot directly call R0 code. The code in our
> device driver has sections which are unique to two or all three
> contexts. That means that this code is compiled three times and
> exists in all three contexts. Other code is exclusively used in
> one or two contexts.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Frank
>
> On Tuesday 02 February 2016 10:00:55 Luca Carotenuto wrote:
> > Gregory, thanks for the reply;
> > anyway, my question was about R3 context of the host.
> > Since the host must emulate the E1000 behaviour, it doesn't need to
> access
> > the I/O space on the host. So, why does it need to be in R0 context?
> > Also, as far as I know, the file VBoxDD.so is a library for R3 context,
> and
> > it has the references
> > for functions running in R0 context (e.g. e1kRegWriteTDT).
> > How can it be possible?
> >
> > Kind Regards,
> > Luca Carotenuto
> >
> > 2016-02-01 16:11 GMT+01:00 Gregory Woodbury <redwolfe at gmail.com>:
> > > Depending on the CPU architecture, Ring 3 processes cannot access the
> > > I/O space without causing a General Protection Exception.
> > >
> > > Callback routines from IO requests are to let the application be told
> > > that an operation is completed.
> > > And thus have to be in the application's memory space, but they are
> > > actually called from the
> > > kernel in R0 space. There are special provisions in the x86 type
> > > architecture for this, and
> > > the callback routine has only a limited amount of freedom to access IO
> > > space.
> > >
> > > In a fully emulated environment, this might not be necessary, but
> > > using the hardware virtualization of KVM/QEMU, to access
> > > the IO space still requires Ring0 privleges.  I is a sort of
> > > mind-bending set of restrictions and interactioins until one
> > > gets used to thinking like the system developers did.
> > >
> > >
> > > On Mon, Feb 1, 2016 at 6:59 AM, Luca Carotenuto
> > >
> > > <luca.carotenuto.91 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > 1) As I understand, when we talk about Ring-0 context, we refer to
> > > > kernel
> > > > space, while Ring-3 context refers to user space. Am I right?
> > > >
> > > > 2) I'm looking inside the E1000 emulation code
> > > > (/src/VBox/Devices/Network/DevE1000.cpp).
> > > > Assuming that the above is right, for what concerns the registers
> > >
> > > callbacks,
> > >
> > > >  I do not understand why those callbacks are compiled to be executed
> in
> > > >
> > > > Ring-0 context
> > > > (When I use logging inside those functions, the thread name i R0).
> > > > Infact, looking inside the VboxDD.so file in the "out/bin" directory
> > >
> > > (using
> > >
> > > > objdump tool), it seems that this code "belongs" to Ring-3 context,
> > > > so why is it running in Ring-0 context?
> > >
> > > --
> > > G.Wolfe Woodbury
> > > redwolfe at gmail.com
>
> --
> Dr.-Ing. Frank Mehnert | Software Development Director, VirtualBox
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-- 
Luca Carotenuto
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