[PATCH doc v2] Document crosvm memfd server

Alyssa Ross
2020-05-27T23:27:35Z

---
Thanks for the comments. Should be addressed now.

Please take a(nother) look. If you think it looks good, I'd
appreciate a Reviewed-by tag from you. :)

(Last bit is just something nice for me to put in the git log,
e.g. Reviewed-by: Alyssa Ross <hi@alyssa.is>, and means that you had a
look and don't see anything wrong with the changes. By convention
those should be sent by the reviewer rather than just made up by
me. :))

developer-manual.adoc | 25 +++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 25 insertions(+)

diff --git a/developer-manual.adoc b/developer-manual.adoc
index a538437..d69707d 100644
--- a/developer-manual.adoc
+++ b/developer-manual.adoc
@@ -194,6 +194,31 @@ compile the policy files into the crosvm binary so paths don't have to
be hardcoded.

+==== The memfd server
+
+Spectrum's crosvm has been augmented with a feature called the "`memfd
+server`", (currently only on the
+https://spectrum-os.org/git/crosvm/log/?h=interguest[interguest]
+branch). This is a small server that listens on a Unix stream socket.
+It receives a request consisting of a name and a size, uses those to
+allocate a
+https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/memfd_create.2.html[memfd], and
+then sends the resulting memfd file descriptor back over the socket in
+response, along with a single byte status code.
+
+The purpose of this is that it can be exposed to the guest over
+virtio_wl. This means that the guest can request and receive
+allocations of host memory. This is important, because virtio_wl only
+allows file descriptors pointing to host memory to be sent over
+virtio_wl -- a memfd allocated in a guest cannot be sent over virtio_wl.
+It is rare that a guest needs to be able to allocate and send shared
+memory in this way, but it is important for a Wayland compositor
+running in a guest to be able to do this.
+
+The memfd server is disabled by default, but is enabled at startup
+with the `--wl-memfd` flag.
+
+
=== Sommelier

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/master/vm_tools/sommelier[Sommelier]
--
2.26.2