Re: [PATCH 2/2] vhost_net: a kernel-level virtio server

From: Avi Kivity
Date: Thu Aug 13 2009 - 11:37:39 EST


On 08/13/2009 05:53 PM, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
On Thursday 13 August 2009, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
The best way to do this IMO would be to add zero copy support to raw
sockets, vhost will then get it basically for free.

Yes, that would be nice. I wonder if that could lead to security
problems on TX though. I guess It will only bring significant performance
improvements if we leave the data writable in the user space or guest
during the operation. If the user finds the right timing, it could
modify the frame headers after they have been checked using netfilter,
or while the frames are being consumed in the kernel (e.g. an NFS
server running in a guest).

IIRC when the kernel consumes data it linearizes the skb. We just need to make sure all the zerocopy data is in the nonlinear part, and the kernel will copy if/when it needs to access packet data.

--
error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function

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