Updating a virtual machine monitor from a guest partition

• US 20080189697A1
• Filed: 02/05/2007
• Published: 08/07/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 02/05/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Taillefer, Martin, McMichael, Lonny Dean, Kachroo, Naveen K.
• Granted Patent: US 8,776,041 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/171
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/65 Updates security arrangements therefor G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45533 Hypervisors; Virtual machine monitors

Abstract

Mechanisms are disclosed for updating a virtual machine monitor (“VMM”). Facilities of a guest operating system running in a guest virtual machine managed by the VMM are leveraged to facilitate receiving an update package. The update package may contain updates for guest operating systems extensions in addition to a VMM update. An updater process, running in a guest operating system, extracts the VMM update and transfers it down to the VMM. Upon successful transfer, the updater process applies any necessary updates to guest operating systems extensions and then signals the VMM to commit the transferred VMM update.

Claims

1. A method for updating a virtual machine monitor comprising:

receiving update data using facilities of a guest operating system;

transferring a first portion of the update data to the virtual machine monitor; and

applying the first portion of the update data to update the virtual machine monitor.

2. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein receiving update data comprises receiving update data using a web browser application.

3. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein transferring a first portion of the received update data comprises:

initiating an updater process on the guest operating system;

extracting a first portion of the update data; and

communicating the first portion of the update data to the virtual machine monitor.

4. A method as recited in claim 3, wherein communicating the first portion of the update data to the virtual machine monitor comprises opening a communication channel between the guest operating system and the virtual machine monitor.

5. A method as recited in claim 3, wherein:

initiating an updater process comprises extracting instructions for the updater process from the received update data; and

launching an updater process on the guest operating system wherein the updater process executes at least some of the extracted instructions.

6. A method as recited in claim 3, wherein transferring a first portion of the update data further comprises:

validating the first portion of the update data before communicating the first portion of the update data to the virtual machine monitor.

7. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein applying the first portion of the update data to the virtual machine monitor comprises:

validating the first portion of the update data using facilities of the virtual machine monitor.

8. A method as recited in claim 7, further comprising:

signaling the guest operating system to indicate a result of validating the first portion of the update data.

9. A method as recited in claim 8, further comprising:

extracting a second portion of the update data;

applying the second portion of the update data to update the guest operating system in response to a signal indicating that a successful result of validating the first portion of the update data.

10. A method as recited in claim 9, wherein the steps of applying the first portion of the update data to update the virtual machine monitor and applying the second portion of the update data to update the guest operating system are coordinated.

11. A system comprising:

at least one physical processor;

a virtual machine monitor configured to execute on a physical processor;

a guest operating system configured to execute under control of the virtual machine monitor; and

a virtual machine monitor updater configured to execute on the guest operating system.

12. A system as recited in claim 11, wherein the virtual machine monitor updater is configured to receive update data, extract a first portion of the update data, and transfer the first portion of the update data to a virtual machine monitor.

13. A system as recited in claim 12, further comprising a browser application for receiving the update data.

14. A system as recited in claim 12, further comprising a communications interface configured to facilitate communication between the guest operating system and the virtual machine monitor.

15. A system as recited in claim 14 wherein the virtual machine monitor updater is further configured to extract a second portion of the update data at to apply the second portion of the update data to update the guest operating system in coordination with an application of the first portion of the update data to update the virtual machine monitor.

16. A system as recited in claim 11 further comprising a game playing console.

17. A system as recited in claim 11 wherein the virtual machine monitor comprises an emulator for emulating an instruction set architecture that differs from the instruction set architecture of the processor.

18. A computer readable medium comprising computer executable instructions for managing an update to a virtual machine monitor, the instructions comprising instructions for:

receiving update data using facilities of a guest operating system;

transferring a first portion of the update data to the virtual machine monitor; and

applying the first portion of the update data to update the virtual machine monitor.

19. A computer readable medium as in claim 18, wherein the instructions further comprise instructions for providing a communications channel between the guest operating system and the virtual machine monitor.

20. A computer readable medium as in claim 19, wherein the instructions further comprise instructions for coordinating the application of the update data to update the guest operating system and to update the virtual machine manager.