Re: [PATCH net-next v2] xen-netback: stop vif thread spinning if frontend is unresponsive

[David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>]

From: Wei Liu <wei.liu2@citrix.com>
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2014 19:37:16 +0000

> On Wed, Jan 08, 2014 at 12:41:58PM +0000, Paul Durrant wrote:
>> The recent patch to improve guest receive side flow control (ca2f09f2) had a
>> slight flaw in the wait condition for the vif thread in that any remaining
>> skbs in the guest receive side netback internal queue would prevent the
>> thread from sleeping. An unresponsive frontend can lead to a permanently
>> non-empty internal queue and thus the thread will spin. In this case the
>> thread should really sleep until the frontend becomes responsive again.
>> 
>> This patch adds an extra flag to the vif which is set if the shared ring
>> is full and cleared when skbs are drained into the shared ring. Thus,
>> if the thread runs, finds the shared ring full and can make no progress the
>> flag remains set. If the flag remains set then the thread will sleep,
>> regardless of a non-empty queue, until the next event from the frontend.
>> 
>> Signed-off-by: Paul Durrant <paul.durrant@citrix.com>
>> Cc: Wei Liu <wei.liu2@citrix.com>
>> Cc: Ian Campbell <ian.campbell@citrix.com>
>> Cc: David Vrabel <david.vrabel@citrix.com>
> 
> Acked-by: Wei Liu <wei.liu2@citrix.com>

Applied.