[PATCH] vhost-user: Guarantee that memory regions do not overlap

[PATCH] vhost-user: Guarantee that memory regions do not overlap

[Demi Marie Obenour]

Otherwise there would be an ambiguity problem.  Suppose that:

1. There is a region from [0x40000, 0x50000) with mmap offset 0x500000.
2. There is a region from [0x48000, 0x58000) with mmap offset 0xA00000.

A request has address 0x44000.  Which mmap offset should be used?

This problem appears with both guest and user addresses.

Signed-off-by: Demi Marie Obenour <demiobenour@gmail.com>
---
 docs/interop/vhost-user.rst | 21 +++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 21 insertions(+)

diff --git a/docs/interop/vhost-user.rst b/docs/interop/vhost-user.rst
index 137c9f3669..8c122c9d21 100644
--- a/docs/interop/vhost-user.rst
+++ b/docs/interop/vhost-user.rst
@@ -204,6 +204,18 @@ fields at the end.
 
 :domid: a 32-bit Xen hypervisor specific domain id.
 
+For all memory regions active at a given time:
+
+- ``[guest address, guest address + size)`` of one memory region never overlaps
+  the ``[guest address, guest address + size)`` of another memory region.
+
+- ``[user address, user address + size)`` of one memory region never overlaps
+  the ``[user address, user address + size)`` of another memory region.
+
+Violating any of these is a bug in the front-end. This ensures that a guest
+address or user address always refers to at most one location in memory.
+The front-end must remove a region before it can add an overlapping one.
+
 Single memory region description
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
@@ -672,6 +684,15 @@ The front-end sends a list of vhost memory regions to the back-end using the
 ``VHOST_USER_SET_MEM_TABLE`` message.  Each region has two base
 addresses: a guest address and a user address.
 
+Memory regions can be added via the ``VHOST_USER_ADD_MEM_REG`` message.  They
+can be removed via the ``VHOST_USER_REM_MEM_REG`` message. These messages can
+only be used if the ``VHOST_USER_PROTOCOL_F_CONFIGURE_MEM_SLOTS`` protocol
+feature has been successfully negotiated.
+
+Guest addresses are physical addresses in the guest.  User addresses are
+arbitrary opaque values, though they typically refer to userspace addresses in
+the client process.
+
 Messages contain guest addresses and/or user addresses to reference locations
 within the shared memory.  The mapping of these addresses works as follows.
 

---
base-commit: f5a2438405d4ae8b62de7c9b39fac0b2155ee544
change-id: 20260522-vhost-user-dev-aa76e3955555

Best regards,
-- 
Demi Marie Obenour <demiobenour@gmail.com>