On 07/27/2018 06:53 PM, Alex Williamson wrote: > On Fri, 27 Jul 2018 12:59:50 +0200 > Christian Borntraeger <borntraeger@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> On 07/27/2018 10:38 AM, Cornelia Huck wrote: >>> On Thu, 26 Jul 2018 21:54:07 +0200 >>> Christian Borntraeger <borntraeger@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> >>>> * The mediated device gained an 'activate' attribute. Sharing conflicts are >>>> checked on activation now. If the device was not activated, the mdev >>>> open still implies activation. An active ap_matrix_mdev device claims >>>> it's resources -- an inactive does not. >>> >>> This means we have a 'commit' workflow? >> >> Yes. We want to be able to "overcommit" definitions. For example when you >> have 2 guests that you never start at the same time. Then you can give both >> guests the same disks. If you start at the same time, libvirt will complain. >> Now: you want to do the same for matrixes. Allocation at definition time >> would limit that flexibility. When we check at "commit" this allows overcommit. > > I raised an eyebrow to this 'activate' attribute as well and I think we > struggled through the same sort of thing when defining mdev initially > with NVIDIA. IIRC there was a proposal that mdev devices could > effectively be overcommitted on the parent and only when they were > opened, would the allocation count against the available instances. > The trouble is then that libvirt has no guarantee that a given mdev > device is usable. I believe we decided that the creation of the mdev > device is the point at which we want to reserve resources because it > provides a better synchronization point. I don't really see what > advantage we have by having these matrices on 'standby', shouldn't > userspace be able to manipulate these dynamically and on-demand of > starting a VM? Thanks, We had this discussion as well and there is a case where not-predefining things might complicate matters: Daniel, please correct me if this is not so: As far as I understand the libvirt folks want to have host devices and guest instances decoupled. So a guest startup will not trigger a define of the mdev instance. (instead it has to be a separate step). This might work with virsh (but it now requires two steps as you can not predefine instances) but it might break things like virt-manager. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-s390" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
