[PATCH 3/5] vhost/vsock: Allocate nonlinear SKBs for handling large receive buffers

Will Deacon
2025-06-25T13:15:59Z

When receiving a packet from a guest, vhost_vsock_handle_tx_kick()
calls vhost_vsock_alloc_skb() to allocate and fill an SKB with the
receive data. Unfortunately, these are always linear allocations and can
therefore result in significant pressure on kmalloc() considering that
the maximum packet size (VIRTIO_VSOCK_MAX_PKT_BUF_SIZE +
VIRTIO_VSOCK_SKB_HEADROOM) is a little over 64KiB, resulting in a 128KiB
allocation for each packet.

Rework the vsock SKB allocation so that, for sizes with page order
greater than PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER, a nonlinear SKB is allocated
instead with the packet header in the SKB and the receive data in the
fragments.

Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>
---
drivers/vhost/vsock.c | 15 +++++++++------
include/linux/virtio_vsock.h | 31 +++++++++++++++++++++++++------
2 files changed, 34 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)

diff --git a/drivers/vhost/vsock.c b/drivers/vhost/vsock.c
index 66a0f060770e..cfa4e1bcf367 100644
--- a/drivers/vhost/vsock.c
+++ b/drivers/vhost/vsock.c
@@ -344,11 +344,16 @@ vhost_vsock_alloc_skb(struct vhost_virtqueue *vq,

len = iov_length(vq->iov, out);

- if (len > VIRTIO_VSOCK_MAX_PKT_BUF_SIZE + VIRTIO_VSOCK_SKB_HEADROOM)
+ if (len < VIRTIO_VSOCK_SKB_HEADROOM ||
+ len > VIRTIO_VSOCK_MAX_PKT_BUF_SIZE + VIRTIO_VSOCK_SKB_HEADROOM)
return NULL;

/* len contains both payload and hdr */
- skb = virtio_vsock_alloc_skb(len, GFP_KERNEL);
+ if (len > SKB_WITH_OVERHEAD(PAGE_SIZE << PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER))
+ skb = virtio_vsock_alloc_skb_with_frags(len, GFP_KERNEL);
+ else
+ skb = virtio_vsock_alloc_skb(len, GFP_KERNEL);
+
if (!skb)
return NULL;

@@ -377,10 +382,8 @@ vhost_vsock_alloc_skb(struct vhost_virtqueue *vq,

virtio_vsock_skb_rx_put(skb);

- nbytes = copy_from_iter(skb->data, payload_len, &iov_iter);
- if (nbytes != payload_len) {
- vq_err(vq, "Expected %zu byte payload, got %zu bytes\n",
- payload_len, nbytes);
+ if (skb_copy_datagram_from_iter(skb, 0, &iov_iter, payload_len)) {
+ vq_err(vq, "Failed to copy %zu byte payload\n", payload_len);
kfree_skb(skb);
return NULL;
}
diff --git a/include/linux/virtio_vsock.h b/include/linux/virtio_vsock.h
index 67ffb64325ef..8f9fa1cab32a 100644
--- a/include/linux/virtio_vsock.h
+++ b/include/linux/virtio_vsock.h
@@ -51,27 +51,46 @@ static inline void virtio_vsock_skb_rx_put(struct sk_buff *skb)
{
u32 len;

+ DEBUG_NET_WARN_ON_ONCE(skb->len);
len = le32_to_cpu(virtio_vsock_hdr(skb)->len);

- if (len > 0)
+ if (skb_is_nonlinear(skb))
+ skb->len = len;
+ else
skb_put(skb, len);
}

-static inline struct sk_buff *virtio_vsock_alloc_skb(unsigned int size, gfp_t mask)
+static inline struct sk_buff *
+__virtio_vsock_alloc_skb_with_frags(unsigned int header_len,
+ unsigned int data_len,
+ gfp_t mask)
{
struct sk_buff *skb;
+ int err;

- if (size < VIRTIO_VSOCK_SKB_HEADROOM)
- return NULL;
-
- skb = alloc_skb(size, mask);
+ skb = alloc_skb_with_frags(header_len, data_len,
+ PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER, &err, mask);
if (!skb)
return NULL;

skb_reserve(skb, VIRTIO_VSOCK_SKB_HEADROOM);
+ skb->data_len = data_len;
return skb;
}

+static inline struct sk_buff *
+virtio_vsock_alloc_skb_with_frags(unsigned int size, gfp_t mask)
+{
+ size -= VIRTIO_VSOCK_SKB_HEADROOM;
+ return __virtio_vsock_alloc_skb_with_frags(VIRTIO_VSOCK_SKB_HEADROOM,
+ size, mask);
+}
+
+static inline struct sk_buff *virtio_vsock_alloc_skb(unsigned int size, gfp_t mask)
+{
+ return __virtio_vsock_alloc_skb_with_frags(size, 0, mask);
+}
+
static inline void
virtio_vsock_skb_queue_head(struct sk_buff_head *list, struct sk_buff *skb)
{
--
2.50.0.714.g196bf9f422-goog