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4 commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
David Stevens
8dd014adfe vhost-net: mergeable buffers support
This adds support for mergeable buffers in vhost-net: this is needed
for older guests without indirect buffer support, as well
as for zero copy with some devices.

Includes changes by Michael S. Tsirkin to make the
patch as low risk as possible (i.e., close to no changes
when feature is disabled).

Signed-off-by: David Stevens <dlstevens@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
2010-07-28 15:45:36 +03:00
Tejun Heo
c23f3445e6 vhost: replace vhost_workqueue with per-vhost kthread
Replace vhost_workqueue with per-vhost kthread.  Other than callback
argument change from struct work_struct * to struct vhost_work *,
there's no visible change to vhost_poll_*() interface.

This conversion is to make each vhost use a dedicated kthread so that
resource control via cgroup can be applied.

Partially based on Sridhar Samudrala's patch.

* Updated to use sub structure vhost_work instead of directly using
  vhost_poll at Michael's suggestion.

* Added flusher wake_up() optimization at Michael's suggestion.

Changes by MST:
* Converted atomics/barrier use to a spinlock.
* Create thread on SET_OWNER
* Fix flushing

Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
Cc: Sridhar Samudrala <samudrala.sridhar@gmail.com>
2010-07-28 15:44:53 +03:00
Michael S. Tsirkin
d5675bd204 vhost: break out of polling loop on error
When ring parsing fails, we currently handle this
as ring empty condition. This means that we enable
kicks and recheck ring empty: if this not empty,
we re-start polling which of course will fail again.

Instead, let's return a negative error code and stop polling.

Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
2010-06-27 11:52:25 +03:00
Michael S. Tsirkin
3a4d5c94e9 vhost_net: a kernel-level virtio server
What it is: vhost net is a character device that can be used to reduce
the number of system calls involved in virtio networking.
Existing virtio net code is used in the guest without modification.

There's similarity with vringfd, with some differences and reduced scope
- uses eventfd for signalling
- structures can be moved around in memory at any time (good for
  migration, bug work-arounds in userspace)
- write logging is supported (good for migration)
- support memory table and not just an offset (needed for kvm)

common virtio related code has been put in a separate file vhost.c and
can be made into a separate module if/when more backends appear.  I used
Rusty's lguest.c as the source for developing this part : this supplied
me with witty comments I wouldn't be able to write myself.

What it is not: vhost net is not a bus, and not a generic new system
call. No assumptions are made on how guest performs hypercalls.
Userspace hypervisors are supported as well as kvm.

How it works: Basically, we connect virtio frontend (configured by
userspace) to a backend. The backend could be a network device, or a tap
device.  Backend is also configured by userspace, including vlan/mac
etc.

Status: This works for me, and I haven't see any crashes.
Compared to userspace, people reported improved latency (as I save up to
4 system calls per packet), as well as better bandwidth and CPU
utilization.

Features that I plan to look at in the future:
- mergeable buffers
- zero copy
- scalability tuning: figure out the best threading model to use

Note on RCU usage (this is also documented in vhost.h, near
private_pointer which is the value protected by this variant of RCU):
what is happening is that the rcu_dereference() is being used in a
workqueue item.  The role of rcu_read_lock() is taken on by the start of
execution of the workqueue item, of rcu_read_unlock() by the end of
execution of the workqueue item, and of synchronize_rcu() by
flush_workqueue()/flush_work(). In the future we might need to apply
some gcc attribute or sparse annotation to the function passed to
INIT_WORK(). Paul's ack below is for this RCU usage.

(Includes fixes by Alan Cox <alan@linux.intel.com>,
David L Stevens <dlstevens@us.ibm.com>,
Chris Wright <chrisw@redhat.com>)

Acked-by: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
Acked-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Acked-by: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
2010-01-15 01:43:29 -08:00