On 2024/08/08 22:55, Peter Xu wrote:
On Thu, Aug 08, 2024 at 08:43:22PM +0900, Akihiko Odaki wrote:
On 2024/08/07 5:41, Peter Xu wrote:
On Mon, Aug 05, 2024 at 04:27:43PM +0900, Akihiko Odaki wrote:
On 2024/08/04 22:08, Peter Xu wrote:
On Sun, Aug 04, 2024 at 03:49:45PM +0900, Akihiko Odaki wrote:
On 2024/08/03 1:26, Peter Xu wrote:
On Sat, Aug 03, 2024 at 12:54:51AM +0900, Akihiko Odaki wrote:
I'm not sure if I read it right. Perhaps you meant something more generic
than -platform but similar?
For example, "-profile [PROFILE]" qemu cmdline, where PROFILE can be either
"perf" or "compat", while by default to "compat"?
"perf" would cover 4) and "compat" will cover 1). However neither of them
will cover 2) because an enum is not enough to know about all hosts. I
presented a design that will cover 2) in:
https://lore.kernel.org/r/2da4ebcd-2058-49c3-a4ec-8e60536e5cbb@xxxxxxxxxx
"-merge-platform" shouldn't be a QEMU parameter, but should be something
separate.
Do you mean merging platform dumps should be done with another command? I
think we will want to know the QOM tree is in use when implementing
-merge-platform. For example, you cannot define a "platform" when e.g., you
don't know what netdev backend (e.g., user, vhost-net, vhost-vdpa) is
connected to virtio-net devices. Of course we can include those information
in dumps, but we don't do so for VMState.
What I was thinking is the generated platform dump shouldn't care about
what is used as backend: it should try to probe whatever is specified in
the qemu cmdline, and it's the user's job to make sure the exact same qemu
cmdline is used in other hosts to dump this information.
IOW, the dump will only contain the information that was based on the qemu
cmdline. E.g., if it doesn't include virtio device at all, and if we only
support such dump for virtio, it should dump nothing.
Then the -merge-platform will expect all dumps to look the same too,
merging them with AND on each field.
I think we will still need the QOM tree in that case. I think the platform
information will look somewhat similar to VMState, which requires the QOM
tree to interpret.
Ah yes, I assume you meant when multiple devices can report different thing
even if with the same frontend / device type. QOM should work, or anything
that can identify a device, e.g. with id / instance_id attached along with
the device class.
One thing that I still don't know how it works is how it interacts with new
hosts being added.
This idea is based on the fact that the cluster is known before starting
any VM. However in reality I think it can happen when VMs started with a
small cluster but then cluster extended, when the -merge-platform has been
done on the smaller set.
Said that, I actually am still not clear on how / whether it should work at
last. At least my previous concern (1) didn't has a good answer yet, on
what we do when profile collisions with qemu cmdlines. So far I actually
still think it more straightforward that in migration we handshake on these
capabilities if possible.
And that's why I was thinking (where I totally agree with you on this) that
whether we should settle a short term plan first to be on the safe side
that we start with migration always being compatible, then we figure the
other approach. That seems easier to me, and it's also a matter of whether
we want to do something for 9.1, or leaving that for 9.2 for USO*.
I suggest disabling all offload features of virtio-net with 9.2.
I want to keep things consistent so I want to disable all at once. This
change will be very uncomfortable for us, who are implementing offload
features, but I hope it will motivate us to implement a proper solution.
That said, it will be surely a breaking change so we should wait for 9.1
before making such a change.
Personally I don't worry too much on other offload bits besides USO* so far
if we have them ON for longer time. My wish was that they're old good
kernel features mostly supported everywhere who runs QEMU, then we're good.
Unfortunately, we cannot expect everyone runs Linux, and the offload
features are provided by Linux. However, QEMU can run on other platforms,
and offload features may be provided by vhost-user or vhost-vdpa.
I see. I am not familiar with the status quo there, so I'll leave that to
you and other experts that know better on this..
Personally I do care more on Linux, as that's what we ship within RH..
And I definitely worry about future offload features, or any feature that
may probe host like this and auto-OFF: I hope we can do them on the safe
side starting from day1.
So I don't know whether we should do that to USO* only or all. But I agree
with you that'll definitely be cleaner.
On the details of how to turn them off properly.. Taking an example if we
want to turn off all the offload features by default (or simply we replace
that with USO-only)..
Upstream machine type is flexible to all kinds of kernels, so we may not
want to regress anyone using an existing machine type even on perf,
especially if we want to turn off all.
In that case we may need one more knob (I'm assuming this is virtio-net
specific issue, but maybe not; using it as an example) to make sure the old
machine types perfs as well, with:
- x-virtio-net-offload-enforce
When set, the offload features with value ON are enforced, so when
the host doesn't support a offload feature it will fail to boot,
showing the error that specific offload feature is not supported by the
virtio backend.
When clear, the offload features with value ON are not enforced, so
these features can be automatically turned OFF when it's detected the
backend doesn't support them. This may bring best perf but has the
risk of breaking migration.
"[PATCH v3 0/5] virtio-net: Convert feature properties to OnOffAuto" adds
"x-force-features-auto" compatibility property to virtio-net for this
purpose:
https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240714-auto-v3-0-e27401aabab3@xxxxxxxxxx
Ah ok. But note that there's still a slight difference: we need to avoid
AUTO being an option, at all, IMHO.
It's about making qemu cmdline the ABI: when with AUTO it's still possible
the user uses AUTO on both sides, then ABI may not be guaranteed.
AUTO would be fine if: (1) the property doesn't affect guest ABI, or (2)
the AUTO bit will always generate the same thing on both hosts. However
USO* isn't such case.. so the AUTO option is IMHO not wanted.
What I mentioned above "x-virtio-net-offload-enforce" shouldn't add
anything new to "uso"; it still can only be ON/OFF. However it should
affect "flip that to OFF automatically" or "fail the boot" behavior on
missing features.
My rationale for the OnOffAuto change is that "flipping ON to OFF
automatically" is more confusing than making users specify AUTO to allow
QEMU making the feature OFF. "ON" will always make the boot fail.
The ABI guarantee will be gone anyway if x-virtio-net-offload-enforce=off.
AUTO is no different in that sense.
Hmm yes; I wished we can have device properties that user can never
specify, but only set from internals. It's just that applying a compat
property so far require a generic device property. Or say, it'll be nice
that compat property can tweak a class variable too then no property to
introduce.
We could even add a migration blocker for x-virtio-net-offload-enforce=ON,
but again it could be too aggresive. I think it might be better we bet
nobody will even know there's the parameter, so it won't be used in manual
setup. OTOH, "guest_uso4" can be too easiy to find there's the AUTO
option: I normally use ",guest_uso4=?" to just dump the possible values.
We can detect and reject AUTO when cross-migrate=on if desired, but I'm
not sure it's worthwhile.
Regards,
Akihiko Odaki
