Re: [PATCH] tests/qtest/migrate-test: Use regular file file for shared-memory tests

[Fabiano Rosas]

Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com> writes:

> On Tue, May 28, 2024 at 09:35:22AM -0400, Peter Xu wrote:
>> On Tue, May 28, 2024 at 02:27:57PM +1000, Nicholas Piggin wrote:
>> > There is no need to use /dev/shm for file-backed memory devices, and
>> > it is too small to be usable in gitlab CI. Switch to using a regular
>> > file in /tmp/ which will usually have more space available.
>> > 
>> > Signed-off-by: Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@gmail.com>
>> > ---
>> > Am I missing something? AFAIKS there is not even any point using
>> > /dev/shm aka tmpfs anyway, there is not much special about it as a
>> > filesystem. This applies on top of the series just sent, and passes
>> > gitlab CI qtests including aarch64.
>> 
>> I think it's just that /dev/shm guarantees shmem usage, while the var
>> "tmpfs" implies g_dir_make_tmp() which may be another non-ram based file
>> system, while that'll be slightly different comparing to what a real user
>> would use - we don't suggest user to put guest RAM on things like btrfs.
>> 
>> One real implication is if we add a postcopy test it'll fail with
>> g_dir_make_tmp() when it is not pointing to a shmem mount, as
>> UFFDIO_REGISTER will fail there.  But that test doesn't yet exist as the
>> QEMU paths should be the same even if Linux will trigger different paths
>> when different types of mem is used (anonymous v.s. shmem).
>> 
>> If the goal here is to properly handle the case where tmpfs doesn't have
>> enough space, how about what I suggested in the other email?
>> 
>> https://lore.kernel.org/r/ZlSppKDE6wzjCF--@x1n
>> 
>> IOW, try populate the shmem region before starting the guest, skip if
>> population failed.  Would that work?
>
> Let me append some more info here..
>
> I think madvise() isn't needed as fallocate() should do the population work
> already, afaiu, then it means we pass the shmem path to QEMU and QEMU
> should notice this memory-backend-file existed, open() directly.
>
> I quicked walk the QEMU memory code and so far it looks all applicable, so
> that QEMU should just start the guest with the pre-populated shmem page
> caches.
>
> There's one trick where qemu_ram_mmap() will map some extra pages, on x86
> 4k, and I don't yet know why we did that..
>
>     /*
>      * Note: this always allocates at least one extra page of virtual address
>      * space, even if size is already aligned.
>      */
>     total = size + align;

At the end of the function:

    /*
     * Leave a single PROT_NONE page allocated after the RAM block, to serve as
     * a guard page guarding against potential buffer overflows.
     */