On Thu, Sep 7, 2017 at 1:02 PM, Peter Xu <pet...@redhat.com> wrote: > On Thu, Sep 07, 2017 at 11:09:29AM +0100, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote: >> On Thu, Sep 7, 2017 at 10:35 AM, Dr. David Alan Gilbert >> <dgilb...@redhat.com> wrote: >> > * Stefan Hajnoczi (stefa...@gmail.com) wrote: >> >> On Wed, Sep 6, 2017 at 4:14 PM, Dr. David Alan Gilbert >> >> <dgilb...@redhat.com> wrote: >> >> > * Stefan Hajnoczi (stefa...@gmail.com) wrote: >> >> >> On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 02:51:03PM +0800, Peter Xu wrote: >> >> >> > The root problem is that, monitor commands are all handled in main >> >> >> > loop thread now, no matter how many monitors we specify. And, if main >> >> >> > loop thread hangs due to some reason, all monitors will be stuck. >> >> >> >> >> >> I see a larger issue with postcopy: existing QEMU code assumes that >> >> >> guest memory access is instantaneous. >> >> >> >> >> >> Postcopy breaks this assumption and introduces blocking points that can >> >> >> now take unbounded time. >> >> >> >> >> >> This problem isn't specific to the monitor. It can also happen to >> >> >> other >> >> >> components in QEMU like the gdbstub. >> >> >> >> >> >> Do we need an asynchronous memory API? Synchronous memory access >> >> >> should >> >> >> only be allowed in vcpu threads. >> >> > >> >> > It would probably be useful for gdbstub where the overhead of async >> >> > doesn't matter; but doing that for all IO emulation is hard. >> >> >> >> Why is it hard? >> >> >> >> Memory access can be synchronous in the vcpu thread. That eliminates >> >> a lot of code straight away. >> >> >> >> Anything using dma-helpers.c is already async. They just don't know >> >> that the memory access part is being made async too :). >> > >> > Can you point me to some info on that ? >> >> IDE and SCSI use dma-helpers.c to perform I/O: >> hw/ide/core.c:892: s->bus->dma->aiocb = >> dma_blk_io(blk_get_aio_context(s->blk), >> hw/ide/macio.c:189: s->bus->dma->aiocb = >> dma_blk_io(blk_get_aio_context(s->blk), &s->sg, >> hw/scsi/scsi-disk.c:348: r->req.aiocb = >> dma_blk_io(blk_get_aio_context(s->qdev.conf.blk), >> hw/scsi/scsi-disk.c:551: r->req.aiocb = >> dma_blk_io(blk_get_aio_context(s->qdev.conf.blk), >> >> They pass a scatter-gather list of guest RAM addresses to >> dma-helpers.c. They receive a callback when I/O has finished. >> >> Try following the code path. Request submission may be from a vcpu >> thread or IOThread. Completion occurs in the main loop or an >> IOThread. >> >> The main point is that this API is already asynchronous. If any >> changes are needed for async guest memory access (not sure, I haven't >> checked), then at least the dma-helpers.c users do not need to be >> modified. >> >> >> The remaining cases are virtio and some other devices. >> >> >> >> If you are worried about performance, the first rule is that async >> >> memory access is only needed on the destination side when post-copy is >> >> active. Maybe use setjmp to return from the signal handler and queue >> >> a callback for when the page has been loaded. >> > >> > I'm not sure it's worth trying to be too clever at avoiding this; >> > I see the fact that we're doing IO with the bql held as a more >> > fundamental problem. >> >> QEMU should be doing I/O syscalls in async fashion or threadpool >> workers (no BQL) so the BQL is not an issue. Anything else could >> cause unbounded waits even without postcopy. > > E.g. when vcpu got page faulted with BQL taken, while the main thread > needs the BQL to dispatch anything, including monitor commands. > > So I think it's a multiplex problem - we need to solve both (1) main > thread accessing guest memories which is still missing, and (2) BQL > deadlocks between vcpu threads and main thread.
I think we need a single solution and cannot treat these as separate. This is because the same virtio device emulation code may run in 3 contexts: 1. vcpu thread (ioeventfd=off) 2. main loop thread (ioeventfd=on) 3. IOThread (ioeventfd=on, iothread=<id>) If you try to solve them separately then the code won't work in all 3 contexts anymore. Stefan
