Re: [PATCH 2/5] vsock/virtio: Resize receive buffers so that each SKB fits in a page

Will Deacon
2025-06-30T13:06:57Z

On Fri, Jun 27, 2025 at 12:41:48PM +0200, Stefano Garzarella wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 25, 2025 at 02:15:40PM +0100, Will Deacon wrote:
> > When allocating receive buffers for the vsock virtio RX virtqueue, an
> > SKB is allocated with a 4140 data payload (the 44-byte packet header +
> > VIRTIO_VSOCK_DEFAULT_RX_BUF_SIZE). Even when factoring in the SKB
> > overhead, the resulting 8KiB allocation thanks to the rounding in
> > kmalloc_reserve() is wasteful (~3700 unusable bytes) and results in a
> > higher-order page allocation for the sake of a few hundred bytes of
> > packet data.
> >
> > Limit the vsock virtio RX buffers to a page per SKB, resulting in much
> > better memory utilisation and removing the need to allocate higher-order
> > pages entirely.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>
> > ---
> > include/linux/virtio_vsock.h | 3 ++-
> > 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/include/linux/virtio_vsock.h b/include/linux/virtio_vsock.h
> > index 36fb3edfa403..67ffb64325ef 100644
> > --- a/include/linux/virtio_vsock.h
> > +++ b/include/linux/virtio_vsock.h
> > @@ -111,7 +111,8 @@ static inline size_t virtio_vsock_skb_len(struct sk_buff *skb)
> > return (size_t)(skb_end_pointer(skb) - skb->head);
> > }
> >
> > -#define VIRTIO_VSOCK_DEFAULT_RX_BUF_SIZE (1024 * 4)
> > +#define VIRTIO_VSOCK_DEFAULT_RX_BUF_SIZE (SKB_WITH_OVERHEAD(PAGE_SIZE) \
> > + - VIRTIO_VSOCK_SKB_HEADROOM)
>
> This is only used in net/vmw_vsock/virtio_transport.c :
>
> static void virtio_vsock_rx_fill(struct virtio_vsock *vsock)
> {
> int total_len = VIRTIO_VSOCK_DEFAULT_RX_BUF_SIZE + VIRTIO_VSOCK_SKB_HEADROOM;
>
>
> What about just remove VIRTIO_VSOCK_DEFAULT_RX_BUF_SIZE and use
> `SKB_WITH_OVERHEAD(PAGE_SIZE)` there? (maybe with a comment summarizing
> the issue we found).

Sure, works for me. That gets rid of the funny +- VIRTIO_VSOCK_SKB_HEADROOM
too.

Will