[RFC PATCH 0/2] spapr: scm: Asynchronus flush hcall support

[Shivaprasad G Bhat]

The nvdimm devices are expected to ensure write persistent during power
failure kind of scenarios.

The libpmem has architecture specific instructions like dcbf on power
to flush the cache data to backend nvdimm device during normal writes.

Qemu - virtual nvdimm devices are memory mapped. The dcbf in the guest
doesn't traslate to actual flush to the backend file on the host in case
of file backed vnvdimms. This is addressed by virtio-pmem in case of x86_64
by making asynchronous flushes.

On PAPR, issue is addressed by adding a new hcall to
request for an explicit asynchronous flush requests from the guest ndctl
driver when the backend nvdimm cannot ensure write persistence with dcbf
alone. So, the approach here is to convey when the asynchronous flush is
required in a device tree property. The guest makes the hcall when the
property is found, instead of relying on dcbf.

The first patch adds the necessary asynchronous hcall support infrastructure
code at the DRC level. Second patch implements the hcall using the
infrastructure.

Hcall semantics are in review and not final.

A new device property sync-dax is added to the nvdimm device. When the sync-dax 
is off(default),
the asynchronous hcalls will be called.

With respect to save from new qemu to restore on old qemu, having the
sync-dax by default off(when not specified) causes IO errors in guests as
the async-hcall would not be supported on old qemu. The new hcall
implementation being supported only on the new  pseries machine version,
the current machine version checks may be to prevent sufficient to prevent
such migration. Please suggest what can be done.

The below demonstration shows the map_sync behavior with sync-dax on & off.
(https://github.com/avocado-framework-tests/avocado-misc-tests/blob/master/memory/ndctl.py.data/map_sync.c)

The pmem0 is from nvdimm with With sync-dax=on, and pmem1 is from nvdimm with 
syn-dax=off, mounted as
/dev/pmem0 on /mnt1 type xfs 
(rw,relatime,attr2,dax=always,inode64,logbufs=8,logbsize=32k,noquota)
/dev/pmem1 on /mnt2 type xfs 
(rw,relatime,attr2,dax=always,inode64,logbufs=8,logbsize=32k,noquota)

[root@atest-guest ~]# ./mapsync /mnt1/newfile    ----> When sync-dax=off
[root@atest-guest ~]# ./mapsync /mnt2/newfile    ----> when sync-dax=on
Failed to mmap  with Operation not supported

---

Shivaprasad G Bhat (2):
      spapr: drc: Add support for async hcalls at the drc level
      spapr: nvdimm: Implement async flush hcalls


 hw/mem/nvdimm.c            |    1
 hw/ppc/spapr_drc.c         |  146 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 hw/ppc/spapr_nvdimm.c      |   79 ++++++++++++++++++++++++
 include/hw/mem/nvdimm.h    |   10 +++
 include/hw/ppc/spapr.h     |    3 +
 include/hw/ppc/spapr_drc.h |   25 ++++++++
 6 files changed, 263 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

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