Re: [PATCH v2] tools/libxl: make default of max event channels dependant on vcpus [and 1 more messages]

[Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>]

On 02.06.2020 13:06, Jürgen Groß wrote:
> On 06.04.20 14:09, Jan Beulich wrote:
>> On 06.04.2020 13:54, Jürgen Groß wrote:
>>> On 06.04.20 13:11, Jan Beulich wrote:
>>>> On 06.04.2020 13:00, Ian Jackson wrote:
>>>>> Julien Grall writes ("Re: [PATCH v2] tools/libxl: make default of max 
>>>>> event channels dependant on vcpus"):
>>>>>> There are no correlation between event channels and vCPUs. The number of
>>>>>> event channels only depends on the number of frontend you have in your
>>>>>> guest. So...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi Ian,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 06/04/2020 11:47, Ian Jackson wrote:
>>>>>>> If ARM folks want to have a different formula for the default then
>>>>>>> that is of course fine but I wonder whether this might do ARMk more
>>>>>>> harm than good in this case.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ... 1023 event channels is going to be plenty enough for most of the use
>>>>>> cases.
>>>>>
>>>>> OK, thanks for the quick reply.
>>>>>
>>>>> So, Jürgen, I think everyone will be happy with this:
>>>>
>>>> I don't think I will be - my prior comment still holds on there not
>>>> being any grounds to use a specific OS kernel's (and to be precise
>>>> a specific OS kernel version's) requirements for determining
>>>> defaults. If there was to be such a dependency, then OS kernel
>>>> [variant] should be part of the inputs to such a (set of) formula(s).
>>>
>>> IMO this kind of trying to be perfect will completely block a sane
>>> heuristic for being able to boot large guests at all.
>>
>> This isn't about being perfect - I'm suggesting to leave the
>> default alone, not to improve the calculation, not the least
>> because I've been implying ...
>>
>>> The patch isn't about to find an as stringent as possible upper
>>> boundary for huge guests, but a sane value being able to boot most of
>>> those.
>>>
>>> And how should Xen know the OS kernel needs exactly after all?
>>
>> ... the answer of "It can#t" to this question.
>>
>>> And it is not that we talking about megabytes of additional memory. A
>>> guest with 256 vcpus will just be able to use additional 36 memory
>>> pages. The maximum non-PV domain (the probably only relevant case
>>> of another OS than Linux being used) with 128 vcpus would "waste"
>>> 32 kB. In case the guest misbehaves.
>>
>> Any extra page counts, or else - where do you draw the line? Any
>> single page may decide between Xen (not) being out of memory,
>> and hence also not being able to fulfill certain other requests.
>>
>>> The alternative would be to do nothing and having to let the user
>>> experience a somewhat cryptic guest crash. He could google for a
>>> possible solution which would probably end in a rather high static
>>> limit resulting in wasting even more memory.
>>
>> I realize this. Otoh more people running into this will improve
>> the chances of later ones finding useful suggestions. Of course
>> there's also nothing wrong with trying to make the error less
>> cryptic.
> 
> Reviving this discussion.
> 
> I strongly disagree with your reasoning.
> 
> Rejecting to modify tools defaults for large guests to make them boot
> is a bad move IMO. We are driving more people away from Xen this way.
> 
> The fear of a misbehaving guest of that size to use a few additional
> pages on a machine with at least 100 cpus is fine from the academical
> point of view, but should not be weighed higher than the usability
> aspect in this case IMO.

Very simple question then: Where do you draw the boundary if you don't
want this to be a pure "is permitted" or "is not permitted" underlying
rule? If we had a model where _all_ resources consumed by a guest were
accounted against its tool stack requested allocation, things would be
easier.

Jan