On 2019/7/12 下午6:00, Stefano Garzarella wrote:
On Thu, Jul 11, 2019 at 03:52:21PM -0400, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
On Thu, Jul 11, 2019 at 01:41:34PM +0200, Stefano Garzarella wrote:
On Thu, Jul 11, 2019 at 03:37:00PM +0800, Jason Wang wrote:
On 2019/7/10 下午11:37, Stefano Garzarella wrote:
Hi,
as Jason suggested some months ago, I looked better at the virtio-net driver to
understand if we can reuse some parts also in the virtio-vsock driver, since we
have similar challenges (mergeable buffers, page allocation, small
packets, etc.).
Initially, I would add the skbuff in the virtio-vsock in order to re-use
receive_*() functions.
Yes, that will be a good step.
Okay, I'll go on this way.
Then I would move receive_[small, big, mergeable]() and
add_recvbuf_[small, big, mergeable]() outside of virtio-net driver, in order to
call them also from virtio-vsock. I need to do some refactoring (e.g. leave the
XDP part on the virtio-net driver), but I think it is feasible.
The idea is to create a virtio-skb.[h,c] where put these functions and a new
object where stores some attributes needed (e.g. hdr_len ) and status (e.g.
some fields of struct receive_queue).
My understanding is we could be more ambitious here. Do you see any blocker
for reusing virtio-net directly? It's better to reuse not only the functions
but also the logic like NAPI to avoid re-inventing something buggy and
duplicated.
These are my concerns:
- virtio-vsock is not a "net_device", so a lot of code related to
ethtool, net devices (MAC address, MTU, speed, VLAN, XDP, offloading) will be
not used by virtio-vsock.
Linux support device other than ethernet, so it should not be a problem.
- virtio-vsock has a different header. We can consider it as part of
virtio_net payload, but it precludes the compatibility with old hosts. This
was one of the major doubts that made me think about using only the
send/recv skbuff functions, that it shouldn't break the compatibility.
We can extend the current vnet header helper for it to work for vsock.
This is an idea of virtio-skb.h that
I have in mind:
struct virtskb;
What fields do you want to store in virtskb? It looks to be exist sk_buff is
flexible enough to us?
My idea is to store queues information, like struct receive_queue or
struct send_queue, and some device attributes (e.g. hdr_len ).
If you reuse skb or virtnet_info, there is not necessary.
struct sk_buff *virtskb_receive_small(struct virtskb *vs, ...);
struct sk_buff *virtskb_receive_big(struct virtskb *vs, ...);
struct sk_buff *virtskb_receive_mergeable(struct virtskb *vs, ...);
int virtskb_add_recvbuf_small(struct virtskb*vs, ...);
int virtskb_add_recvbuf_big(struct virtskb *vs, ...);
int virtskb_add_recvbuf_mergeable(struct virtskb *vs, ...);
For the Guest->Host path it should be easier, so maybe I can add a
"virtskb_send(struct virtskb *vs, struct sk_buff *skb)" with a part of the code
of xmit_skb().
I may miss something, but I don't see any thing that prevents us from using
xmit_skb() directly.
Yes, but my initial idea was to make it more parametric and not related to the
virtio_net_hdr, so the 'hdr_len' could be a parameter and the
'num_buffers' should be handled by the caller.
Let me know if you have in mind better names or if I should put these function
in another place.
I would like to leave the control part completely separate, so, for example,
the two drivers will negotiate the features independently and they will call
the right virtskb_receive_*() function based on the negotiation.
If it's one the issue of negotiation, we can simply change the
virtnet_probe() to deal with different devices.
I already started to work on it, but before to do more steps and send an RFC
patch, I would like to hear your opinion.
Do you think that makes sense?
Do you see any issue or a better solution?
I still think we need to seek a way of adding some codes on virtio-net.c
directly if there's no huge different in the processing of TX/RX. That would
save us a lot time.
After the reading of the buffers from the virtqueue I think the process
is slightly different, because virtio-net will interface with the network
stack, while virtio-vsock will interface with the vsock-core (socket).
So the virtio-vsock implements the following:
- control flow mechanism to avoid to loose packets, informing the peer
about the amount of memory available in the receive queue using some
fields in the virtio_vsock_hdr
- de-multiplexing parsing the virtio_vsock_hdr and choosing the right
socket depending on the port
- socket state handling
I think it's just a branch, for ethernet, go for networking stack.
otherwise go for vsock core?
We can use the virtio-net as transport, but we should add a lot of
code to skip "net device" stuff when it is used by the virtio-vsock.
This could be another choice, but consider it was not transparent to the
admin and require new features, we may seek a transparent solution here.
This could break something in virtio-net, for this reason, I thought to reuse
only the send/recv functions starting from the idea to split the virtio-net
driver in two parts:
a. one with all stuff related to the network stack
b. one with the stuff needed to communicate with the host
And use skbuff to communicate between parts. In this way, virtio-vsock
can use only the b part.
Maybe we can do this split in a better way, but I'm not sure it is
simple.
Thanks,
Stefano
Frankly, skb is a huge structure which adds a lot of
overhead. I am not sure that using it is such a great idea
if building a device that does not have to interface
with the networking stack.
I believe vsock is mainly used for stream performance not for PPS. So
the impact should be minimal. We can use other metadata, just need
branch in recv_xxx().
Thanks for the advice!
So I agree with Jason in theory. To clarify, he is basically saying
current implementation is all wrong, it should be a protocol and we
should teach networking stack that there are reliable net devices that
handle just this protocol. We could add a flag in virtio net that
will say it's such a device.
Whether it's doable, I don't know, and it's definitely not simple - in
particular you will have to also re-implement existing devices in these
terms, and not just virtio - vmware vsock too.
Merging vsock protocol to exist networking stack could be a long term
goal, I believe for the first phase, we can seek to use virtio-net first.
If you want to do a POC you can add a new address family,
that's easier.
Very interesting!
I agree with you. In this way we can completely split the protocol
logic, from the device.
As you said, it will not simple to do, but can be an opportunity to learn
better the Linux networking stack!
I'll try to do a PoC with AF_VSOCK2 that will use the virtio-net.
I suggest to do this step by step:
1) use virtio-net but keep some protocol logic
2) separate protocol logic and merge it to exist Linux networking stack
Thanks
Just reusing random functions won't help, net stack
is very heavy, if it manages to outperform vsock it's
because vsock was not written with performance in mind.
But the smarts are in the core not virtio driver.
What makes vsock slow is design decisions like
using a workqueue to process packets,
not batching memory management etc etc.
All things that net core does for virtio net.
Got it :)
Michael, Jason, thank you very much! Your suggestions are very useful!
Stefano
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