Re: KVM "fake DAX" flushing interface - discussion

[Pankaj Gupta <pagupta@redhat.com>]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your reply.

> 
> On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 10:23 PM, Pankaj Gupta <pagupta@redhat.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hello Dan,
> >
> >> Not a flag, but a new "Address Range Type GUID". See section "5.2.25.2
> >> System Physical Address (SPA) Range Structure" in the ACPI 6.2A
> >> specification. Since it is a GUID we could define a Linux specific
> >> type for this case, but spec changes would allow non-Linux hypervisors
> >> to advertise a standard interface to guests.
> >>
> >
> > I have added new SPA with a GUUID for this memory type and I could add
> > this new memory type in System memory map. I need help with the namespace
> > handling for this new type As mentioned in [1] discussion:
> >
> > - Create a new namespace for this new memory type
> > - Teach libnvdimm how to handle this new namespace
> >
> > I have some queries on this:
> >
> > 1] How namespace handling of this new memory type would be?
> 
> This would be a namespace that creates a pmem device, but does not allow DAX.

o.k

> 
> >
> > 2] There are existing namespace types:
> >   ND_DEVICE_NAMESPACE_IO, ND_DEVICE_NAMESPACE_PMEM, ND_DEVICE_NAMESPACE_BLK
> >
> >   How libnvdimm will handle this new name-space type in conjuction with
> >   existing
> >   memory type, region & namespaces?
> 
> The type will be either ND_DEVICE_NAMESPACE_IO or
> ND_DEVICE_NAMESPACE_PMEM depending on whether you configure KVM to
> provide a virtual NVDIMM and label space. In other words the only
> difference between this range and a typical persistent memory range is
> that we will have a flag to disable DAX operation.

o.k. In short we have disable this flag 'QUEUE_FLAG_DAX' for this 
namespace & region? Also don't execute below code for this new type?

pmem_attach_disk()
...
...
        dax_dev = alloc_dax(pmem, disk->disk_name, &pmem_dax_ops);
        if (!dax_dev) {
                put_disk(disk);
                return -ENOMEM;
        }
        dax_write_cache(dax_dev, wbc);
        pmem->dax_dev = dax_dev;

> 
> See the usage of nvdimm_has_cache() in pmem_attach_disk() as an
> example of how to pass attributes about the "region" to the the pmem
> driver.

sure.

> 
> >
> > 3] For sending guest to host flush commands we still have to think about
> > some
> >    async way?
> 
> I thought we discussed this being a paravirtualized virtio command ring?

o.k. will implement this. 

> 
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