Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2 6/7] virtio: fix virtio-blk child refcount in transports

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 07:11:27PM +1000, Peter Crosthwaite wrote:
> On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 1:40 AM, Stefan Hajnoczi <address@hidden> wrote:
> > object_initialize() leaves the object with a refcount of 1.
> > object_property_add_child() adds its own reference which is dropped
> > again when the property is deleted.
> >
> > The upshot of this is that we always have a refcount >= 1.  Upon hot
> > unplug the virtio-blk child is not finalized!
> >
> 
> Doesn't this suggest that hot unplug is what's broken? My
> understanding (which is fresh and not 100% yet) is the original == 1
> refcount should be dropped at object deletion time which is this sense
> would be unplug time. This would mean that hot-unplug should
> explicitly object_unref the object (should the intention of hot-unplug
> be to always finalise the device?).

We could add an explicit object_unref() but I think it's simpler to rely
on the QOM child property refcount semantics instead of keeping a
duplicate reference.

object_property_add_child() increments the refcount.  Releasing the
child property decrements the refcount again.

Now, in the context of the virtio-blk-pci parent object and its
VirtIOBlock child:

When the parent object is finalized and its properties are released, the
ref to the child will automatically be decremented.

This is exactly what we need.

Stefan