Commit Graph

204 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Jeff Dike 1dace8c801 vhost: fix error path in vhost_net_set_backend
An error could cause vhost_net_set_backend to exit without unlocking
vq->mutex. Fix this.

Signed-off-by: Jeff Dike <jdike@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
2010-03-07 13:28:53 +02:00
Sridhar Samudrala 39286fa41a vhost-net: restart tx poll on sk_sndbuf full
guest to remote communication with vhost net sometimes stops until
guest driver is restarted. This happens when we get guest kick precisely
when the backend send queue is full, as a result handle_tx() returns without
polling backend. This patch fixes this by restarting tx poll on this condition.

Signed-off-by: Sridhar Samudrala <samudrala@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
Tested-by: Tom Lendacky <toml@us.ibm.com>
2010-02-28 19:50:33 +02:00
Arnd Bergmann 501c774cb1 net/macvtap: add vhost support
This adds support for passing a macvtap file descriptor into
vhost-net, much like we already do for tun/tap.

Most of the new code is taken from the respective patch
in the tun driver and may get consolidated in the future.

Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Acked-by: Sridhar Samudrala <sri@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
2010-02-18 14:08:38 -08:00
Michael S. Tsirkin 3a4d5c94e9 vhost_net: a kernel-level virtio server
What it is: vhost net is a character device that can be used to reduce
the number of system calls involved in virtio networking.
Existing virtio net code is used in the guest without modification.

There's similarity with vringfd, with some differences and reduced scope
- uses eventfd for signalling
- structures can be moved around in memory at any time (good for
  migration, bug work-arounds in userspace)
- write logging is supported (good for migration)
- support memory table and not just an offset (needed for kvm)

common virtio related code has been put in a separate file vhost.c and
can be made into a separate module if/when more backends appear.  I used
Rusty's lguest.c as the source for developing this part : this supplied
me with witty comments I wouldn't be able to write myself.

What it is not: vhost net is not a bus, and not a generic new system
call. No assumptions are made on how guest performs hypercalls.
Userspace hypervisors are supported as well as kvm.

How it works: Basically, we connect virtio frontend (configured by
userspace) to a backend. The backend could be a network device, or a tap
device.  Backend is also configured by userspace, including vlan/mac
etc.

Status: This works for me, and I haven't see any crashes.
Compared to userspace, people reported improved latency (as I save up to
4 system calls per packet), as well as better bandwidth and CPU
utilization.

Features that I plan to look at in the future:
- mergeable buffers
- zero copy
- scalability tuning: figure out the best threading model to use

Note on RCU usage (this is also documented in vhost.h, near
private_pointer which is the value protected by this variant of RCU):
what is happening is that the rcu_dereference() is being used in a
workqueue item.  The role of rcu_read_lock() is taken on by the start of
execution of the workqueue item, of rcu_read_unlock() by the end of
execution of the workqueue item, and of synchronize_rcu() by
flush_workqueue()/flush_work(). In the future we might need to apply
some gcc attribute or sparse annotation to the function passed to
INIT_WORK(). Paul's ack below is for this RCU usage.

(Includes fixes by Alan Cox <alan@linux.intel.com>,
David L Stevens <dlstevens@us.ibm.com>,
Chris Wright <chrisw@redhat.com>)

Acked-by: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
Acked-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Acked-by: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
2010-01-15 01:43:29 -08:00