Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH RFC 1/6] io: only allow return path for socket typed

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 07:41:34PM +0100, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:
> * Daniel P. Berrange (address@hidden) wrote:
> > On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 03:33:12PM +0100, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:
> > > * Daniel P. Berrange (address@hidden) wrote:
> > > > > shutdown() is safe, in that it stops any other threads accessing the 
> > > > > fd
> > > > > but doesn't allow it's reallocation until the close;  We perform the
> > > > > close only when we've joined all other threads that were using the fd.
> > > > > Any of the threads that do new calls on the fd get an error and 
> > > > > quickly
> > > > > fall down their error paths.
> > > > 
> > > > Ahh that's certainly an interesting scenario. That would certainly be
> > > > a problem with the migration code when this was originally written.
> > > > It had two QEMUFile structs each with an 'int fd' field, so when you
> > > > close 'fd' on one QEMUFile struct, it wouldn't update the other QEMUFile
> > > > used by another thread.
> > > > 
> > > > Since we switched over to use QIOChannel though, I think the thread
> > > > scenario you describe should be avoided entirely. When you have multiple
> > > > QEMUFile objects, they each have a reference counted pointer to the same
> > > > underlying QIOChannel object instance. So when QEMUFile triggers a call
> > > > to qio_channel_close() in one thread, that'll set fd=-1 in the 
> > > > QIOChannel.
> > > > Since the other threads have a reference to the same QIOChannel object,
> > > > they'll now see this fd == -1 straightaway.
> > > > 
> > > > So, IIUC, this should make the need for shutdown() redundant (at least
> > > > for the thread race conditions you describe).
> > > 
> > > That's not thread safe unless you're doing some very careful locking.
> > > Consider:
> > >   T1                      T2       
> > >      oldfd=fd               tmp=fd
> > >      fd=-1
> > >      close(oldfd)
> > >      unrelated open()
> > >                             read(tmp,...
> > > 
> > > In practice every use of fd will be a copy into a tmp and then the
> > > syscall; the unrelated open() could happen in another thread.
> > > (OK, the gap between the tmp and the read is tiny, although if we're
> > > doing multiple operations chances are the compiler will optimise
> > > it to the top of a loop).
> > > 
> > > There's no way to make that code safe.
> > 
> > Urgh, yes, I see what you mean.
> > 
> > Currently the QIOChannelCommand implementation, uses a pair of anonymous
> > pipes for stdin/out to the child process. I wonder if we could switch
> > that to use socketpair() instead, thus letting us shutdown() on it too.
> > 
> > Though I guess it would be sufficient for qio_channel_shutdown() to
> > merely kill the child PID, while leaving the FDs open, as then you'd
> > get EOF and/or EPIPE on the read/writes.
> 
> Yes, I guess it's a question of which one is more likely to actually
> kill the exec child off; the socketpair is more likely to cause the
> source side migration code to cancel cleanly, although a kill -9 
> should sort out a wayward exec child.

I'm also curious if there's any real world performance difference between
using a pipe vs socketpair to communicate with a child process

Regards,
Daniel
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