os: don't corrupt pre-existing memory-backend data with prealloc

When using a memory-backend object with prealloc turned on, QEMU
will memset() the first byte in every memory page to zero. While
this might have been acceptable for memory backends associated
with RAM, this corrupts application data for NVDIMMs.

Instead of setting every page to zero, read the current byte
value and then just write that same value back, so we are not
corrupting the original data. Directly write the value instead
of memset()ing it, since there's no benefit to memset for a
single byte write.

Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrange <berrange@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Message-id: 20170303113255.28262-1-berrange@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 13 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/util/oslib-posix.c b/util/oslib-posix.c
index 956f66ab4a..94d81b9ec0 100644
--- a/util/oslib-posix.c
+++ b/util/oslib-posix.c
@@ -361,7 +361,19 @@ static void *do_touch_pages(void *arg)
         memset_thread_failed = true;
     } else {
         for (i = 0; i < numpages; i++) {
-            memset(addr, 0, 1);
+            /*
+             * Read & write back the same value, so we don't
+             * corrupt existing user/app data that might be
+             * stored.
+             *
+             * 'volatile' to stop compiler optimizing this away
+             * to a no-op
+             *
+             * TODO: get a better solution from kernel so we
+             * don't need to write at all so we don't cause
+             * wear on the storage backing the region...
+             */
+            *(volatile char *)addr = *addr;
             addr += hpagesize;
         }
     }