Paolo Bonzini <pbonz...@redhat.com> writes:
>> virtio_ring: virtqueue_add_sgs, to add multiple sgs.
>>
>> virtio_scsi and virtio_blk can really use these, to avoid their current
>> hack of copying the whole sg array.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Ruty Russell <ru...@rustcorp.com.au>
>
> It's much better than the other prototype you had posted, but I still
> dislike this... You pay for additional counting of scatterlists when
> the caller knows the number of buffers
Yes, but I like the API simplicity. We could use an array of sg_table,
which is what you have in virtio_scsi anyway, but I doubt it's
measurable on benchmarks.
> and the nested loops aren't free, either.
I think they'll win over multiple function calls :)
But modulo devastating benchmarks, this wins. Because the three-part
API is really, really ugly. It *looks* like a generic "start - work
... work - end" API, but it's not. Because you need to declare exactly
what you're doing in virtqueue_start_buf!
And that's OK, because noone wants a generic API like that.
> > + sg_unmark_end(sg + out + in);
> > + if (out && in)
> > + sg_unmark_end(sg + out);
>
> What's this second sg_unmark_end block for? Doesn't it access after the
> end of sg? If you wanted it to be sg_mark_end, that must be:
>
> if (out)
> sg_mark_end(sg + out - 1);
> if (in)
> sg_mark_end(sg + out + in - 1);
>
> with a corresponding unmark afterwards.
Thanks, I fixed that after I actually tested it :)
But as we clean them every time, we don't need to unmark:
/* Workaround until callers pass well-formed sgs. */
for (i = 0; i < out + in; i++)
sg_unmark_end(sg + i);
sg_mark_end(sg + out + in - 1);
if (out && in)
sg_mark_end(sg + out - 1);
return virtqueue_add_sgs(_vq, sgs, out ? 1 : 0, in ? 1 : 0, data, gfp);
This is a workaround until all callers fixed / replaced, of course.
> Another problem is that you cannot pass "truncated" scatterlists. You
> must ensure there is an end marker on the last item. I'm not sure if
> the kernel ensures that, given that for_each_sg takes explicitly the
> number of scatterlist elements; and it is not as trivial as
> "sg_mark_end(foo + nsg - 1);" if the upper layers hand you a chained
> scatterlist.
Makes you wonder why they have end markers at all. But yes, the block
layer does the right thing with end markers in blk_bio_map_sg(), which
seems to carry through.
Cheers,
Rusty.
PS. Patchbomb coming, lightly tested.
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