xenbus(4) - NetBSD Manual Pages

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XENBUS(4)             NetBSD/xen Kernel Interfaces Manual            XENBUS(4)


NAME

     xenbus -- Xen bus abstraction for paravirtualized drivers


SYNOPSIS

     xenbus* at hypervisor?


DESCRIPTION

     The xenbus interface offers an abstraction layer used for communications
     between domains.  xenbus is mainly used by split paravirtualized drivers,
     so backend and frontend devices can exchange configuration information,
     properties, and statistics.

     xenbus is not used for data transfer (network frames, blocks, PCI com-
     mands, ...). This functionality is implemented by each paravirtualized
     driver independently, typically via shared memory pages and an event
     channel that serves as a virtual interrupt, for signaling.

     The xenbus abstraction offers guests the possibility to read and write
     information directly from and to XenStore, a centralized database acces-
     sible to all domains.  For this reason, it also has an event channel
     associated to it, so that domains can post messages to the XenStore
     facility.


DIAGNOSTICS

     xenbus0: using event channel %d  The event channel associated to the
     xenbus interface, for communication with the XenStore database.


SEE ALSO

     pciback(4), xbd(4), xbdback(4), xennet(4), xpci(4), xvif(4)


HISTORY

     The xenbus driver first appeared in NetBSD 3.0.


AUTHORS

     The xenbus driver was written by Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@NetBSD.org>.

NetBSD 6.1.2                    January 8, 2011                   NetBSD 6.1.2