Re: [Qemu-devel] add multiple times opening support to a virtserialport

[Asias He]

Hello Christoffer,

On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 2:30 AM, Christoffer Dall
<address@hidden> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 10:23:38AM -0400, Christopher Covington wrote:
>> On 07/24/2015 08:00 AM, Matt Ma wrote:
>> > Hi all,
>> >
>> > Linaro has developed the foundation for the new Android Emulator code
>> > base based on a fairly recent upstream QEMU code base, when we
>> > re-based the code, we updated the device model to be more virtio based
>> > (for example the drives are now virtio block devices). The aim of this
>> > is to minimise the delta between upstream and the Android specific
>> > changes to QEMU. One Android emulator specific feature is the
>> > AndroidPipe.
>> >
>> > AndroidPipe is a communication channel between the guest system and
>> > the emulator itself. Guest side device node can be opened by multi
>> > processes at the same time with different service name. It has a
>> > de-multiplexer on the QEMU side to figure out which service the guest
>> > actually wanted, so the first write after opening device node is the
>> > service name guest wanted, after QEMU backend receive this service
>> > name, create a corresponding communication channel, initialize related
>> > component, such as file descriptor which connect to the host socket
>> > serve. So each opening in guest will create a separated communication
>> > channel.
>> >
>> > We can create a separate device for each service type, however some
>> > services, such as the OpenGL emulation, need to have multiple open
>> > channels at a time. This is currently not possible using the
>> > virtserialport which can only be opened once.
>> >
>> > Current virtserialport can not  be opened by multiple processes at the
>> > same time. I know virtserialport has provided buffers beforehand to
>> > cache data from host to guest, so even there is no guest read, data
>> > can still be transported from host to guest kernel, when there is
>> > guest read request, just copy cached data to user space.
>> >
>> > We are not sure clearly whether virtio can support
>> > multi-open-per-device semantics or not, followings are just our
>> > initial ideas about adding multi-open-per-device feature to a port:
>> >
>> > * when there is a open request on a port, kernel will allocate a
>> > portclient with new id and __wait_queue_head to track this request
>> > * save this portclient in file->private_data
>> > * guest kernel pass this portclient info to QEMU and notify that the
>> > port has been opened
>> > * QEMU backend will create a clientinfo struct to track this
>> > communication channel, initialize related component
>> > * we may change the kernel side strategy of allocating receiving
>> > buffers in advance to a new strategy, that is when there is a read
>> > request:
>> >     - allocate a port_buffer, put user space buffer address to
>> > port_buffer.buf, share memory to avoid memcpy
>> >     - put both portclient id(or portclient addrss) and port_buffer.buf
>> > to virtqueue, that is the length of buffers chain is 2
>> >     - kick to notify QEMU backend to consume read buffer
>> >     - QEMU backend read portclient info firstly to find the correct
>> > clientinfo, then read host data directly into virtqueue buffer to
>> > avoid memcpy
>> >     - guest kernel will wait(similarly in block mode, because the user
>> > space address has been put into virtqueue) until QEMU backend has
>> > consumed buffer(all data/part data/nothing have been sent to host
>> > side)
>> >     - if nothing has been read from host and file descriptor is in
>> > block mode, read request will wait through __wait_queue_head until
>> > host side is readable
>> >
>> > * above read logic may change the current behavior of transferring
>> > data to guest kernel even without guest user read
>> >
>> > * when there is a write request:
>> >     - allocate a port_buffer, put user space buffer address to
>> > port_buffer.buf, share memory to avoid memcpy
>> >     - put both portclient id(or portclient addrss) and port_buffer.buf
>> > to virtqueue, the length of buffers chain is 2
>> >     - kick to notify QEMU backend to consume write buffer
>> >     - QEMU backend read portclient info firstly to find the correct
>> > clientinfo, then write the virtqueue buffer content to host side as
>> > current logic
>> >     - guest kernel will wait(similarly in block mode, because the user
>> > space address has been put into virtqueue) until QEMU backend has
>> > consumed buffer(all data/part data/nothing have been receive from host
>> > side)
>> >     - if nothing has been sent out and file descriptor is in block
>> > mode, write request will wait through __wait_queue_head until host
>> > side is writable
>> >
>> > We obviously don't want to regress existing virtio behaviour and
>> > performance and welcome the communities expertise to point out
>> > anything we may have missed out before we get to far down implementing
>> > our initial proof-of-concept.
>
> Hi Chris,
>
>>
>> Would virtio-vsock be interesting for your purposes?
>>
>> http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/stefanha-kvm-forum-2015.pdf
>>
>> (Video doesn't seem to be up yet, but should probably be available eventually
>> at the following link)
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW3ep1uCIRfyLNSu708gWG7uvqlolk0ep
>>
> Thanks for looking at this lengthy mail.  Yes, we are looking at
> virtio-vsock already, and I think this is definietely the right fix.

Glad to hear from potential user of virtio-vsock ;-)

>
> -Christoffer
>



-- 
Asias