NAME
xpci —
Xen frontend paravirtualized PCI
pass-through driver
SYNOPSIS
xpci* at xenbus?
pci* at xpci?
DESCRIPTION
The
xpci driver is the frontend part of the PCI pass-through
functionality that can be used by Xen guest domains to communicate with PCI
devices.
From a guest point of view,
xpci is similar to a
pci(4) bus, except that the guest
talks with the PCI backend driver instead of the real physical device
directly.
When the host domain is
NetBSD, the
xpci driver is backed by a
pciback(4) driver within the
dom0.
SEE ALSO
pci(4),
pciback(4),
xenbus(4)
HISTORY
The
xpci driver first appeared in
NetBSD
5.1.
AUTHORS
The
xpci driver was written by
Manuel
Bouyer
<
bouyer@NetBSD.org>.
SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
As PCI passthrough offers the possibility for guest domains to send arbitrary
PCI commands to a physical device, this has direct impact on the overall
stability and security of the system. For example, in case of erroneous or
malicious commands, the device could overwrite physical memory portions, via
DMA.