Re: [PATCH 2/3] xend: Add multiple cpumasks support

[Ryan Harper <ryanh@us.ibm.com>]

* Ian Pratt <m+Ian.Pratt@cl.cam.ac.uk> [2006-08-14 17:04]:
> > Are you interested in the multi cpumask approach?  
> 
> Yes: it certainly doesn't hurt to have that flexibility. 
> 
> > If so any thoughts on how
> > you'd like to see multiple cpumasks in the config file?
> 
> Either Keir's cpu[X] = "Y" approach or my cpu = [ "A","B","C" ] approach
> seem workable.

Your last email seemed to indicate to me that you didn't like using
quoted values in a list to separate per-vcpu cpumask values.  Maybe I
was mistaken.

> 
> Keir's approach is rather ill defined if someone tries using both cpu=
> and cpu[X]= in the same config file, but I don't see that as a big
> problem.  Take your pick :-)

I'm leaning toward the list notation since I already have code that
parses that properly.

> 
> BTW: does the right thing happen in the face of vcpu hot plugging? i.e.
> if I unplug a vcpu and put it back in do I keep the old mask? If I add
> vcpus what mask do they get?

unplug events only affect a vcpu's status.  The internal struct
vcpu in the hypervisor is not de-allocated/re-allocated during hotplug
events.

We don't currently support a hotadd for vcpus that weren't allocated at
domain creation time.  The current method for simulating hot-add would
be to start a domain with 32 VCPUS and disable all by the number of
vcpus you currently want.  Ryan Grimm posted a patch back in February
that had xend do this by adding a new config option, max_vcpus, which
was used when calling xc_domain_max_vcpus() having the hypervisor alloc
that max number of vcpus and then using the vcpus parameter to determine
how many to bring online.

> 
> We should probably add a 'vcpu-pin' variant that enables the mask to be
> set for all vcpus. Perhaps '-1' for the vcpu number? Or should we add
> 'vcpu-pin-all'?

vcpu-pin using -1 is probably the quickest, least intrusive method to
get this behavior.  We could also use a keyword, all for instance:

xm vcpu-pin vm1 all 0-4,^5 

> 
> [secondly, what do you think about implicitly defaulting the mask to all
> 1's if the first item in a cpu mask is an exclusion? e.g. ^1] 

That makes sense.  I'll include a patch in the set to add this behavior.

-- 
Ryan Harper
Software Engineer; Linux Technology Center
IBM Corp., Austin, Tx
(512) 838-9253   T/L: 678-9253
ryanh@us.ibm.com