Re: [PATCH v8 10/10] Documentation: Add documentation for VDUSE

From: Jason Wang
Date: Wed Jul 07 2021 - 05:32:49 EST


在 2021/7/7 下午4:55, Stefan Hajnoczi 写道:
On Wed, Jul 07, 2021 at 11:43:28AM +0800, Jason Wang wrote:
在 2021/7/7 上午1:11, Stefan Hajnoczi 写道:
On Tue, Jul 06, 2021 at 09:08:26PM +0800, Jason Wang wrote:
On Tue, Jul 6, 2021 at 6:15 PM Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, Jul 06, 2021 at 10:34:33AM +0800, Jason Wang wrote:
在 2021/7/5 下午8:49, Stefan Hajnoczi 写道:
On Mon, Jul 05, 2021 at 11:36:15AM +0800, Jason Wang wrote:
在 2021/7/4 下午5:49, Yongji Xie 写道:
OK, I get you now. Since the VIRTIO specification says "Device
configuration space is generally used for rarely-changing or
initialization-time parameters". I assume the VDUSE_DEV_SET_CONFIG
ioctl should not be called frequently.
The spec uses MUST and other terms to define the precise requirements.
Here the language (especially the word "generally") is weaker and means
there may be exceptions.

Another type of access that doesn't work with the VDUSE_DEV_SET_CONFIG
approach is reads that have side-effects. For example, imagine a field
containing an error code if the device encounters a problem unrelated to
a specific virtqueue request. Reading from this field resets the error
code to 0, saving the driver an extra configuration space write access
and possibly race conditions. It isn't possible to implement those
semantics suing VDUSE_DEV_SET_CONFIG. It's another corner case, but it
makes me think that the interface does not allow full VIRTIO semantics.
Note that though you're correct, my understanding is that config space is
not suitable for this kind of error propagating. And it would be very hard
to implement such kind of semantic in some transports. Virtqueue should be
much better. As Yong Ji quoted, the config space is used for
"rarely-changing or intialization-time parameters".


Agreed. I will use VDUSE_DEV_GET_CONFIG in the next version. And to
handle the message failure, I'm going to add a return value to
virtio_config_ops.get() and virtio_cread_* API so that the error can
be propagated to the virtio device driver. Then the virtio-blk device
driver can be modified to handle that.

Jason and Stefan, what do you think of this way?
Why does VDUSE_DEV_GET_CONFIG need to support an error return value?

The VIRTIO spec provides no way for the device to report errors from
config space accesses.

The QEMU virtio-pci implementation returns -1 from invalid
virtio_config_read*() and silently discards virtio_config_write*()
accesses.

VDUSE can take the same approach with
VDUSE_DEV_GET_CONFIG/VDUSE_DEV_SET_CONFIG.

I'd like to stick to the current assumption thich get_config won't fail.
That is to say,

1) maintain a config in the kernel, make sure the config space read can
always succeed
2) introduce an ioctl for the vduse usersapce to update the config space.
3) we can synchronize with the vduse userspace during set_config

Does this work?
I noticed that caching is also allowed by the vhost-user protocol
messages (QEMU's docs/interop/vhost-user.rst), but the device doesn't
know whether or not caching is in effect. The interface you outlined
above requires caching.

Is there a reason why the host kernel vDPA code needs to cache the
configuration space?
Because:

1) Kernel can not wait forever in get_config(), this is the major difference
with vhost-user.
virtio_cread() can sleep:

#define virtio_cread(vdev, structname, member, ptr) \
do { \
typeof(((structname*)0)->member) virtio_cread_v; \
\
might_sleep(); \
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Which code path cannot sleep?
Well, it can sleep but it can't sleep forever. For VDUSE, a
buggy/malicious userspace may refuse to respond to the get_config.

It looks to me the ideal case, with the current virtio spec, for VDUSE is to

1) maintain the device and its state in the kernel, userspace may sync
with the kernel device via ioctls
2) offload the datapath (virtqueue) to the userspace

This seems more robust and safe than simply relaying everything to
userspace and waiting for its response.

And we know for sure this model can work, an example is TUN/TAP:
netdevice is abstracted in the kernel and datapath is done via
sendmsg()/recvmsg().

Maintaining the config in the kernel follows this model and it can
simplify the device generation implementation.

For config space write, it requires more thought but fortunately it's
not commonly used. So VDUSE can choose to filter out the
device/features that depends on the config write.
This is the problem. There are other messages like SET_FEATURES where I
guess we'll face the same challenge.

Probably not, userspace device can tell the kernel about the device_features
and mandated_features during creation, and the feature negotiation could be
done purely in the kernel without bothering the userspace.


(For some reason I drop the list accidentally, adding them back, sorry)


Sorry, I confused the messages. I meant SET_STATUS. It's a synchronous
interface where the driver waits for the device.


It depends on how we define "synchronous" here. If I understand correctly, the spec doesn't expect there will be any kind of failure for the operation of set_status itself.

Instead, anytime it want any synchronization, it should be done via get_status():

1) re-read device status to make sure FEATURES_OK is set during feature negotiation
2) re-read device status to be 0 to make sure the device has finish the reset



VDUSE currently doesn't wait for the device emulation process to handle
this message (no reply is needed) but I think this is a mistake because
VDUSE is not following the VIRTIO device model.


With the trick that is done for FEATURES_OK above, I think we don't need to wait for the reply.

If userspace takes too long to respond, it can be detected since get_status() doesn't return the expected value for long time.

And for the case that needs a timeout, we probably can use NEEDS_RESET.



I strongly suggest designing the VDUSE interface to match the VIRTIO
device model (or at least the vDPA interface).


I fully agree with you and that is what we want to achieve in this series.


Defining a custom
interface for VDUSE avoids some implementation complexity and makes it
easier to deal with untrusted userspace, but it's impossible to
implement certain VIRTIO features or devices. It also fragments VIRTIO
more than necessary; we have a standard, let's stick to it.


Yes.



I agree that caching the contents of configuration space in the kernel
helps, but if there are other VDUSE messages with the same problem then
an attacker will exploit them instead.

I think a systematic solution is needed. It would be necessary to
enumerate the virtio_vdpa and vhost_vdpa cases separately to figure out
where VDUSE messages are synchronous/time-sensitive.

This is the case of reset and needs more thought. We should stick a
consistent uAPI for the userspace.

For vhost-vDPA, it needs synchronzied with the userspace and we can wait for
ever.
The VMM should still be able to handle signals when a vhost_vdpa ioctl
is waiting for a reply from the VDUSE userspace process. Or if that's
not possible then there needs to be a way to force disconnection from
VDUSE so the VMM can be killed.


Note that VDUSE works under vDPA bus, so vhost should be transport to VDUSE.

But we can detect this via whether or not the bounce buffer is used.

Thanks



Stefan