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Re: [PATCH V4 24/24] [RFC] libxl: Add support for virtio-disk configuration



Hi Oleksandr,

On 18/01/2021 08:32, Oleksandr wrote:

On 16.01.21 00:01, Julien Grall wrote:
Hi Oleksandr,

Hi Julien



On 12/01/2021 21:52, Oleksandr Tyshchenko wrote:
From: Oleksandr Tyshchenko <oleksandr_tyshchenko@xxxxxxxx>

This patch adds basic support for configuring and assisting virtio-disk
backend (emualator) which is intended to run out of Qemu and could be run
in any domain.

Xenstore was chosen as a communication interface for the emulator running in non-toolstack domain to be able to get configuration either by reading Xenstore directly or by receiving command line parameters (an updated 'xl devd' running in the same domain would read Xenstore beforehand and call backend
executable with the required arguments).

An example of domain configuration (two disks are assigned to the guest,
the latter is in readonly mode):

vdisk = [ 'backend=DomD, disks=rw:/dev/mmcblk0p3;ro:/dev/mmcblk1p3' ]

Where per-disk Xenstore entries are:
- filename and readonly flag (configured via "vdisk" property)
- base and irq (allocated dynamically)

Besides handling 'visible' params described in configuration file,
patch also allocates virtio-mmio specific ones for each device and
writes them into Xenstore. virtio-mmio params (irq and base) are
unique per guest domain, they allocated at the domain creation time
and passed through to the emulator. Each VirtIO device has at least
one pair of these params.

TODO:
1. An extra "virtio" property could be removed.
2. Update documentation.

Signed-off-by: Oleksandr Tyshchenko <oleksandr_tyshchenko@xxxxxxxx>
[On Arm only]
Tested-by: Wei Chen <Wei.Chen@xxxxxxx>

---
Changes RFC -> V1:
    - no changes

Changes V1 -> V2:
    - rebase according to the new location of libxl_virtio_disk.c

Changes V2 -> V3:
    - no changes

Changes V3 -> V4:
    - rebase according to the new argument for DEFINE_DEVICE_TYPE_STRUCT

Please note, there is a real concern about VirtIO interrupts allocation.
[Just copy here what Stefano said in RFC thread]

So, if we end up allocating let's say 6 virtio interrupts for a domain,
the chance of a clash with a physical interrupt of a passthrough device is real.

For the first version, I think a static approach is fine because it doesn't bind us to anything yet (there is no interface change). We can refine it on follow-ups as we figure out how virtio is going to be used in the field.


I am not entirely sure how to solve it, but these are a few ideas:
- choosing virtio interrupts that are less likely to conflict (maybe > 1000)

Well, we only support 988 interrupts :). However, we will waste some memory in the vGIC structure (we would need to allocate memory for the 988 interrupts) if you chose an interrupt towards then end.

- make the virtio irq (optionally) configurable so that a user could
   override the default irq and specify one that doesn't conflict

This is not very ideal because it makes the use of virtio quite unfriendly with passthrough. Note that platform device passthrough is already unfriendly, but I am thinking PCI :).

- implementing support for virq != pirq (even the xl interface doesn't
   allow to specify the virq number for passthrough devices, see "irqs")
I can't remember whether I had a reason to not support virq != pirq when this was initially implemented. This is one possibility, but it is as unfriendly as the previous option.

I will add a 4th one:
   - Automatically allocate the virtio IRQ. This should be possible to do it without too much trouble as we know in advance which IRQs will be passthrough.
As I understand the IRQs for passthrough are described in "irq" property and stored in d_config->b_info.irqs[i], so yes we know in advance which IRQs will be used for passthrough and we will be able to choose non-clashed ones (iterating over all IRQs in a reserved range) for the virtio devices.  The question is how many IRQs should be reserved.

If we are automatically selecting the interrupt for virtio devices, then I don't think we need to reserve a batch. Instead, we can allocate one by one as we create the virtio device in libxl.

For the static case, then a range of 10-20 might be sufficient for now.

[...]

-        nr_spis += (GUEST_VIRTIO_MMIO_SPI - 32) + 1;
+        uint64_t virtio_base;
+        libxl_device_virtio_disk *virtio_disk;
+
+        virtio_base = GUEST_VIRTIO_MMIO_BASE;
          virtio_irq = GUEST_VIRTIO_MMIO_SPI;

Looking at patch #23, you defined a single SPI and a region that can only fit virtio device. However, here, you are going to define multiple virtio devices.

I think you want to define the following:

 - GUEST_VIRTIO_MMIO_BASE: Base address of the virtio window
 - GUEST_VIRTIO_MMIO_SIZE: Full length of the virtio window (may contain multiple devices)
 - GUEST_VIRTIO_SPI_FIRST: First SPI reserved for virtio
 - GUEST_VIRTIO_SPI_LAST: Last SPI reserved for virtio

The per-device size doesn't need to be defined in arch-arm.h. Instead, I would only define internally (unless we can use a virtio.h header from Linux?).

I think I got the idea. What are the preferences for these values?

I have suggested some values in patch #23. Let me know what you think there.

[...]

+
+        nr_spis += (virtio_irq - 32) + 1;
          virtio_enabled = true;
      }

[...]

diff --git a/tools/xl/xl_parse.c b/tools/xl/xl_parse.c
index 2a3364b..054a0c9 100644
--- a/tools/xl/xl_parse.c
+++ b/tools/xl/xl_parse.c
@@ -1204,6 +1204,120 @@ out:
      if (rc) exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
  }
  +#define MAX_VIRTIO_DISKS 4

May I ask why this is hardcoded to 4?

I found 4 as a reasonable value for the initial implementation.
This means how many disks the single device instance can handle.

Right, the question is why do you need to impose a limit in xl?

Looking at the code, the value is only used in:

+        if (virtio_disk->num_disks > MAX_VIRTIO_DISKS) {
+            fprintf(stderr, "vdisk: currently only %d disks are supported",
+                    MAX_VIRTIO_DISKS);

The rest of the code (at list in libxl/xl) seems to be completely agnostic to the number of disks. So it feels strange to me to impose what looks like an arbitrary limit in the tools.

Cheers,

--
Julien Grall



 


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