In order for a PV domain to set up DMA from a passed-through device to
one of its pages, the page must be mapped in the IOMMU. On the other
hand, before a PV page may be used as a "special" page type (such as a
pagetable or descriptor table), it _must not_ be writable in the IOMMU
(otherwise a malicious guest could DMA arbitrary page tables into the
memory, bypassing Xen's safety checks); and Xen's current rule is to
have such pages not in the IOMMU at all.
Until now, in order to accomplish this, the code has borrowed HVM
domain's "physmap" concept: When a page is assigned to a guest,
guess_physmap_add_entry() is called, which for PV guests, will create
a writable IOMMU mapping; and when a page is removed,
guest_physmap_remove_entry() is called, which will remove the mapping.
Additionally, when a page gains the PGT_writable page type, the page
will be added into the IOMMU; and when the page changes away from a
PGT_writable type, the page will be removed from the IOMMU.
Unfortunately, borrowing the "physmap" concept from HVM domains is
problematic. HVM domains have a lock on their p2m tables, ensuring
synchronization between modifications to the p2m; and all hypercall
parameters must first be translated through the p2m before being used.
Trying to mix this locked-and-gated approach with PV's lock-free
approach leads to several races and inconsistencies.