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    libxl: domain save/restore: run in a separate process · 2812d660
    Ian Jackson authored
    
    
    libxenctrl expects to be able to simply run the save or restore
    operation synchronously.  This won't work well in a process which is
    trying to handle multiple domains.
    
    The options are:
    
     - Block such a whole process (eg, the whole of libvirt) while
       migration completes (or until it fails).
    
     - Create a thread to run xc_domain_save and xc_domain_restore on.
       This is quite unpalatable.  Multithreaded programming is error
       prone enough without generating threads in libraries, particularly
       if the thread does some very complex operation.
    
     - Fork and run the operation in the child without execing.  This is
       no good because we would need to negotiate with the caller about
       fds we would inherit (and we might be a very large process).
    
     - Fork and exec a helper.
    
    Of these options the latter is the most palatable.
    
    Consequently:
    
     * A new helper program libxl-save-helper (which does both save and
       restore).  It will be installed in /usr/lib/xen/bin.  It does not
       link against libxl, only libxc, and its error handling does not
       need to be very advanced.  It does contain a plumbing through of
       the logging interface into the callback stream.
    
     * A small ad-hoc protocol between the helper and libxl which allows
       log messages and the libxc callbacks to be passed up and down.
       Protocol doc comment is in libxl_save_helper.c.
    
     * To avoid a lot of tedium the marshalling boilerplate (stubs for the
       helper and the callback decoder for libxl) is generated with a
       small perl script.
    
     * Implement new functionality to spawn the helper, monitor its
       output, provide responses, and check on its exit status.
    
     * The functions libxl__xc_domain_restore_done and
       libxl__xc_domain_save_done now turn out to want be called in the
       same place.  So make their state argument a void* so that the two
       functions are type compatible.
    
    The domain save path still writes the qemu savefile synchronously.
    This will need to be fixed in a subsequent patch.
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatarIan Jackson <ian.jackson@eu.citrix.com>
    Acked-by: default avatarIan Campbell <ian.campbell@citrix.com>
    2812d660