[Lguest] [kvm-devel] [RFC PATCH 0/4] Inter-guest virtio I/O example with lguest

[Rusty Russell]

On Thursday 20 March 2008 17:54:45 Avi Kivity wrote:
> Rusty Russell wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> >    Just finished my prototype of inter-guest virtio, using networking as
> > an example.  Each guest mmaps the other's address space and uses a FIFO
> > for notifications.
>
> Isn't that a security hole (hole? chasm)?  If the two guests can access
> each other's memory, they might as well be just one guest, and
> communicate internally.

Sorry, sloppy language on my part.  Each launcher process maps the other 
guest's memory as well: ie. copying occurs in the host.

> My feeling is that the host needs to copy the data, using dma if
> available.  Another option is to have one guest map the other's memory
> for read and write, while the other guest is unprivileged.  This allows
> one privileged guest to provide services for other, unprivileged guests,
> like domain 0 or driver domains in Xen.

One having privilege is possible, even trivial with the current patch (it's 
actually doing a completely generic inter-virtio-ring shuffle).  I chose the 
symmetrical approach for this demo for no particularly good reason.

Cheers,
Rusty.