Re: [PATCH RFC server v2 05/11] vfio-user: run vfio-user context

[Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>]

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On Wed, Sep 08, 2021 at 01:37:53PM +0000, John Levon wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 08, 2021 at 01:58:46PM +0100, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> 
> > > +static void *vfu_object_attach_ctx(void *opaque)
> > > +{
> > > +    VfuObject *o = opaque;
> > > +    int ret;
> > > +
> > > +retry_attach:
> > > +    ret = vfu_attach_ctx(o->vfu_ctx);
> > > +    if (ret < 0 && (errno == EAGAIN || errno == EWOULDBLOCK)) {
> > 
> > Does this loop consume 100% CPU since this is non-blocking?
> 
> Looks like it. Instead after vfu_create_ctx, there should be a vfu_get_poll_fd()
> to get the listen socket, then a qemu_set_fd_handler(vfu_object_attach_ctx)
> to handle the attach when the listen socket is ready, modulo the below part.
> 
> > libvfio-user has non-blocking listen_fd but conn_fd is always blocking.
> 
> It is, but in vfu_run_ctx(), we poll on it:
> 
> ```
> 790     if (vfu_ctx->flags & LIBVFIO_USER_FLAG_ATTACH_NB) {                          
> 791         sock_flags = MSG_DONTWAIT | MSG_WAITALL;                                 
> 792     }                                                                            
> 793     return get_msg(hdr, sizeof(*hdr), fds, nr_fds, ts->conn_fd, sock_flags);     
> ```

This is only used for the request header. Other I/O is blocking.

> 
> > This means ATTACH_NB is not useful because vfu_attach_ctx() is actually
> > blocking.
> 
> You're correct that vfu_attach_ctx is in fact partially blocking: after
> accepting the connection, we call negotiate(), which can indeed block waiting if
> the client hasn't sent anything.
> 
> > I think this means vfu_run_ctx() is also blocking in some places
> 
> Correct. There's a presumption that if a message is ready, we can read it all
> without blocking, and equally that we can write to the socket without blocking.
> 
> The library docs are not at all clear on this point.
> 
> > and QEMU's event loop might hang :(
> > 
> > Can you make libvfio-user non-blocking in order to solve these issues?
> 
> I presume you're concerned about the security aspect: a malicious client could
> withhold a write, and hence hang the device server.
> 
> Problem is the libvfio-user API is synchronous: there's no way to return
> half-way through a vfu_attach_ctx() (or a vfu_run_ctx() after we read the
> header) then resume.
> 
> We'd have to have a whole separate API to do that, so a separate thread seems a
> better approach?

Whether to support non-blocking properly in libvfio-user is a decision
for you. If libvfio-user doesn't support non-blocking, then QEMU should
run a dedicated thread instead of the partially non-blocking approach in
this patch.

A non-blocking approach is nice when there are many devices hosted in a
single process or a lot of async replies (which requires extra thread
synchronization with the blocking approach).

Stefan

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