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Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC PATCH 1/1] s390x/css: unresrict cssids


From: Christian Borntraeger
Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC PATCH 1/1] s390x/css: unresrict cssids
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2017 13:09:40 +0100
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.4.0


On 11/30/2017 10:50 AM, Cornelia Huck wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Nov 2017 19:51:23 +0100
> Christian Borntraeger <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> On 11/28/2017 03:45 PM, Cornelia Huck wrote:
>>> On Tue, 28 Nov 2017 15:17:49 +0100
>>> Christian Borntraeger <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>   
>>>> On 11/28/2017 03:01 PM, Cornelia Huck wrote:  
>>>>> On Tue, 28 Nov 2017 14:25:08 +0100
>>>>> Christian Borntraeger <address@hidden> wrote:  
>>>   
>>>>>> What I want now is to enable vfio-ccw for libvirt and Linux guests and 
>>>>>> for that
>>>>>> we need to lift the restriction of having vfio not in FE.    
>>>>>
>>>>> This, however, worries me. I don't really consider vfio-ccw ready for
>>>>> prime time yet. We still need to figure out path handling at the very
>>>>> least. And I'm still not sure that our non-handling of halt/clear won't
>>>>> cause major issues with e.g. a storage server error recovery.
>>>>>
>>>>> Can we flag vfio-ccw as experimental or such in libvirt?    
>>>>
>>>> We should have flagged vfio-ccw experimental in QEMU then.
>>>> e.g. by using x-vfio-ccw or whatever.I dont think we can do that
>>>> after the facts.  
>>>
>>> Yes, we should have done that... can't fix that now, unfortunately.
>>>   
>>>>
>>>> I am not that deep into vfio-ccw, but I was under the impression that
>>>> the missing features should not affect the vfio interface that is
>>>> created by libvirt. After all this should just be a "-device 
>>>> vfio-ccw,....."
>>>> statement and some setup steps beforehand (unbind + setup of vfio-ccw)  
>>>
>>> The halt/clear stuff is highly unlikely to influence the configuration
>>> interface. I'm still not too clear about path handling, though. Will we
>>> need different modes (hypervisor managed vs. full passthrough? probably
>>> only passthrough)? What about pgid handling - do we need some kind of
>>> pgid manager? (Keep in mind that you get to set the pgid once. This has
>>> implications for e.g. reserve/release.)
>>>
>>> Also, what about devices other than ECKD DASD? Has there been any
>>> testing? Tapes should be interesting; the other interesting ccw devices
>>> are QDIO-based and I'm not sure we want to spend anything on supporting
>>> those.  
>>
>> DASD is probably the most important thing today, QDIO might never happen
>> (or very late).
> 
> One thing I'd find interesting about tapes is very long running channel
> programs (like rewind) and how they interact with halt/clear. But yes,
> I would think that DASD is the most important one in practice.
> 
>> See my proposal below.
>>
>>>
>>> The interface is probably fine, but I'd like to get an idea about the
>>> path stuff (is the attachment spec that contains the pgid stuff
>>> publicly available, btw.?)
>>>   
>>>>
>>>> If your concern is the serviceability I think it would be valid for a RHEL
>>>> KVM to disable vfio-ccw in the kernel. Maybe we could even provide a config
>>>> for QEMU?  
>>>
>>> It's fine just to turn off vfio-ccw in the kernel.
>>>   
>>>> PS: I learned from the PCI and CCW experience that I do not want
>>>> to upstream kernel/qemu code unless I have a working libvirt code that
>>>> shows that the thing will work.  
>>>
>>> Yes, I understand the wish to verify the interface, and I think it's a
>>> good idea. What I'm worried about is that this might be the precursor
>>> to a push to support it, and I don't think vfio-ccw is ready for that
>>> yet.
>>>   
>> FWIW, libvirt should not care if a device works in all cases or not because 
>> libvirt versions should work with all kind of QEMU/kernel combinations. 
>> Fencing in libvirt that the kernel part is not up to the task is making
>> me feel the same way as you when you see  the css-unrestricted property
>> at a device ;-)
> 
> I'm more worried about the political angle than the technical. If we
> don't get pressure to support this too soon, I don't care that much
> about experimental or not.
> 
>> Having said that, I think that having vfio-ccw support has a value (and it
>> actually works for an unnamed test infrastructure). In addition to that I 
>> am much more likely to actually test this continuously if I have libvirt 
>> support.
> 
> Good to hear that it works for a non-Linux guest. Any plans to test
> something like storage server failover?
> 
> [I'd really love to do something about the path handling stuff, but the
> combination of scant documentation and scantier time works against me.]
> 
>>
>>
>> So what about the following: 
>>
>> 1. We will implement the libvirt support with either a or b:
>> a: if we find a solution to our "where to put the property" dispute use that 
>> to decide
>> if we can add vfio-ccw
>> b if not: just provide a patch that lifts the restriction without any 
>> property.
>> in libvirt blindy assume  that free assignment will work. old QEMUs will 
>> complain at
>> startup and  libvirt will print the QEMU error. This is similar to other 
>> situations 
>> where libvirt cannot fully bprobe  if the QEMU will work or not. (not having 
>> vfio-ccw
>> support in the kernel will certainly allow libvirt to reject this upfront)
> 
> I hope we end up with a solution that works for everyone...
> 
>>
>> 2. at the same time we mark vfio-ccw experimental in the kernel to make clear
>>  that this is still work in progress
> 
> I'm not sure we can do that after the fact, but let's do it if we can.

I think we can change that. Its just a Kconfig dependency.
 
>>
>> 3. (optional) we could even whitelist devices that work in a reasonable 
>> fashion (e.g.
>> do not whitelist qdio but whitelist DASD)
> 
> I think it's not quite that easy with vfio-ccw working at the
> subchannel level.
> 




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