Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC] libvhost-user: implement VHOST_USER_PROTOCOL_F_KICK_CALL_MSGS

[Michael S. Tsirkin]

On Fri, Sep 06, 2019 at 04:48:39PM +0200, Johannes Berg wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Fri, 2019-09-06 at 10:22 -0400, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 06, 2019 at 03:13:50PM +0300, Johannes Berg wrote:
> > > From: Johannes Berg <address@hidden>
> > > 
> > > Signed-off-by: Johannes Berg <address@hidden>
> > 
> > a bit more content here about the motivation for this?
> 
> Heh, right, definitely needed.
> 
> I was just sending it out as the corresponding patch to the spec change
> RFC, where I explained more, so didn't really bother here yet. However,
> I evidently forgot to CC you on that:
> 
> https://lore.kernel.org/qemu-devel/address@hidden/


Oh. Apparently qemu mailman chose this time to kick me out
of list subscription (too many bounces or something?)
so I didn't see it.

> I'm still trying to implement it in User-Mode Linux (UML, ARCH=um),
> we've submitted patches for virtio/vhost-user support to that, but the
> simulation-bound IRQ handling is a bit complicated. I need to see how it
> turns out once I actually get it to work - I've gotten this extension,
> SLAVE_REQ and REPLY_ACK to work now, so need to "just" integrate with
> the time-travel mode I already have.
> 
> In any case, if you think that this is a stupid extension and say you
> will never accept it, I'll probably just implement a slightly more
> hackish way, setting vhost-user to polling mode and using out-of-band
> signalling or so. This seems a bit cleaner though, and if it's properly
> spec'ed and with sample code and all then it'll possibly be far more
> useful to others. (**)


What worries me is the load this places on the socket.
ATM if socket buffer is full qemu locks up, so we
need to be careful not to send too many messages.

> 
> 
> I think I also forgot to CC you on these two:
> https://lore.kernel.org/qemu-devel/address@hidden/
> https://lore.kernel.org/qemu-devel/address@hidden/
> 
> Again, sorry about that.
> 
> Btw, at least one of these files doesn't even have an entry in the
> maintainers file. Don't remember if it was the spec though or the
> libvhost-user stuff.
> 
> 
> (**) For example, there's the VMSimInt paper (***) that shows a very
> similar thing with QEMU, but works only with CPU emulation. With UML's
> time-travel mode made to work over virtio we can do similar things
> without CPU emulation. I suspect it's also possible to emulate the HPET
> or so in a KVM-based system, but seems far more tricky (to me at least).
> 
> (***) 
> http://www.ikr.uni-stuttgart.de/Content/Publications/Archive/We_SIMUTools_2014_40209.pdf
> 
> Thanks,
> johannes