Re: [Qemu-stable] [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2] virtio-bus: Plug devices after features are negotiated

[Cornelia Huck]

On Wed, 14 Dec 2016 08:41:55 +0000
Stefan Hajnoczi <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 8:28 AM, Maxime Coquelin
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 12/14/2016 08:44 AM, Cornelia Huck wrote:
> >>>
> >>> > 14:44 < stefanha> Not sure if anyone can think of a nicer solution.
> >>> > 14:45 < stefanha> But we're going to have to keep lying to the guest if
> >>> > we want to preserve migration compatibility
> >>> > 14:45 < stefanha> The key change in behavior with the patch you
> >>> > identified is:
> >>> > 14:46 < stefanha> if (!virtio_has_feature(vdev->host_features,
> >>> > VIRTIO_F_VERSION_1)) {
> >>> > 14:46 < stefanha> virtio_pci_disable_modern(proxy);
> >>> > 14:46 < stefanha> Previously it didn't care about vdev->host_features.
> >>> > It simply allowed VERSION_1 when proxy's disable_modern boolean was 
> >>> > false.
> >>> > 14:47 < mdroth> stefanha: ok, that explains why it seems to work with
> >>> > disable-modern=true
> >>> > 14:48 < stefanha> mdroth: Your Ubuntu kernel old but 14.04 LTS is
> >>> > definitely still around so I don't think we can ship QEMU 2.8 like this.
> >>> > 14:49 < stefanha> mdroth: Let's summarize it on the mailing list and
> >>> > see what Michael Tsirkin and Maxime Coquelin think.
> >>> > 14:49 < mdroth> stefanha: i suppose a potential workaround would be to
> >>> > tell users to set disable-modern= to match their vhost capabilities, but
> >>> > it's hard for them to apply that retroactively if they're looking to 
> >>> > migrate
> >>
> >> Another thought: Maybe this bug only surfaced right now because older
> >> qemus defaulted virtio-pci to legacy?
> >>
> >> (I think modern virtio-pci with old vhost resulted in a config that was
> >> rejected at least by Linux guests. Because pci defaulted to legacy, we
> >> only had the post-plugged workaround for ccw before.)
> >
> >
> > Yes, for PCI with old vhost, modern enabled and recent kernel on guest,
> > we get this failure at virtio-pci probe time:
> >
> > virtio_net virtio0: virtio: device uses modern interface but does not have
> > VIRTIO_F_VERSION_1.
> 
> Is this error a regression in QEMU 2.8?

I think it pokes up because modern virtio-pci is now by default on. It
was broken before if the user wanted a modern virtio-pci device
explicitly.

(ccw defaulted to virtio 1.0 much earlier, so we had the post-plugged
solution that this patch replaced and which is basically the same for
ccw.)

> 
> It's better to ship with an existing issue still open than with a new
> regression.  We must not break existing users' setups.
> 
> A solution for the next QEMU version is to use a flag in the machine
> type version telling virtio whether or not allow devices (e.g.
> vhost-net) to influence the host feature bits.  Old machine types will
> say no, new machine types will say yes.
> 
> In the meantime I would revert your patch for QEMU 2.8.
> 
> Maxime, Cornelia, Michael: Do you agree?
> 
> Stefan

Reverting the patch should be fine for ccw. What about the virtio-pci
with old vhost mess, though? Defaulting to modern would mean that users
get unusable devices in that setup.