Re: [virtio-dev] [RFC QEMU] docs: vhost-user: Add custom memory mapping support

[Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>]

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On Thu, Mar 02, 2023 at 01:49:07PM +0530, Viresh Kumar wrote:
> On 01-03-23, 12:29, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> > What is the advantage over defining separate messages? Separate messages
> > are cleaner and more typesafe.
> 
> I thought we wanted to keep single message for one kind of functionality, which
> is mmap related quirks here. And so it would be better if we can reuse the same
> for next hypervisor which may need this.
> 
> The value parameter is not fixed and is hypervisor specific, for Xen this is the
> domain id, for others it may mean something else.

mmap-related quirks have no parameters or behavior in common so there's
no advantage in sharing a single vhost-user protocol message. Sharing
the same message just makes it awkward to build and parse the message.

> > I don't have a concrete example, but was thinking of a guest that shares
> > memory with other guests (like the experimental virtio-vhost-user
> > device). Maybe there would be a scenario where some memory belongs to
> > one domain and some belongs to another (but has been mapped into the
> > first domain), and the vhost-user back-end needs to access both.
> 
> These look tricky (and real) and I am not sure how we would want to handle
> these. Maybe wait until we have a real use-case ?

A way to deal with that is to include mmap information every time fds
are passed with a message instead of sending one global message at the
start of the vhost-user connection. This would allow each mmap to
associate extra information instead of forcing them all to use the same
information.

> > The other thing that comes to mind is that the spec must clearly state
> > which mmaps are affected by the Xen domain information. For example,
> > just mem table memory regions and not the
> > VHOST_USER_PROTOCOL_F_LOG_SHMFD feature?
> 
> Maybe we can mention that only the mmap's performed via /dev/xen/privcmd and
> /dev/xen/gntdev files are affected by this ?

No, this doesn't explain when mmap must be performed via
/dev/xen/privcmd and /dev/xen/gntdev. The spec should be explicit about
this instead of assuming that the device implementer already knows this.

Stefan

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