Re: [RFC PATCH] Regression in linux 2.6.32 virtio_net seen with vhost-net

["Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>]

On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 08:25:12PM +0800, Herbert Xu wrote:
> Sridhar Samudrala <sri@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> > When testing vhost-net patches with a guest running linux 2.6.32, i am
> > running into "Unexpected full queue" warning messages from start_xmit() in
> > virtio_net.c causing a lot of requeues and a drastic reduction in throughput.
> > 
> > With a guest running 2.6.31, i get guest to host throughput around 7000Mb/s,
> > but it drops to around 3200Mb/s with 2.6.32.
> > 
> > I don't see this problem with usermode virtio in qemu, but i get a thruput of
> > only 2700Mb/s with both 2.6.31 and 2.6.32.
> > 
> > The following patch fixes this problem by dropping the skb and not requeuing
> > to qdisc when it cannot be added to ring buffer. With this patch, i see
> > similar performance as 2.6.31 with vhost-net.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Sridhar Samudrala <sri@us.ibm.com>
> > 
> > diff --git a/drivers/net/virtio_net.c b/drivers/net/virtio_net.c
> > index b9e002f..307cfd6 100644
> > --- a/drivers/net/virtio_net.c
> > +++ b/drivers/net/virtio_net.c
> > @@ -528,7 +528,11 @@ again:
> >                        netif_start_queue(dev);
> >                        goto again;
> >                }
> > -               return NETDEV_TX_BUSY;
> > +
> > +               /* drop the skb under stress. */ 
> > +               vi->dev->stats.tx_dropped++;
> > +               kfree_skb(skb);
> > +               return NETDEV_TX_OK;
> >        }
> 
> This patch only hides the real problem.  The issue is that we
> should never start the queue unless we can accomodate a full
> 64KB packet.
> 
> In your case, whenever we have the space for a single slot we'd
> start the queue.  However, if the head of the queue required more
> than one slot it would immediately return BUSY and stop the queue
> again.
> 
> Your patch simply drops the packet (likely to be TSO) which would
> end up upsetting the TCP transmitter.
> 
> Please see what a real Ethernet driver (e.g., tg3 or ixgbe) does
> for queue management.
> 
> Cheers,

An interesting thing is that
48925e372f04f5e35fec6269127c62b2c71ab794
was supposed to do this already.

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