Re: vdpa legacy guest support (was Re: [PATCH] vdpa/mlx5: set_features should allow reset to zero)

[Michael S. Tsirkin]

On Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 05:59:45PM -0800, Si-Wei Liu wrote:
> 
> 
> On 12/12/2021 1:26 AM, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 05:44:15PM -0800, Si-Wei Liu wrote:
> > > Sorry for reviving this ancient thread. I was kinda lost for the conclusion
> > > it ended up with. I have the following questions,
> > > 
> > > 1. legacy guest support: from the past conversations it doesn't seem the
> > > support will be completely dropped from the table, is my understanding
> > > correct? Actually we're interested in supporting virtio v0.95 guest for x86,
> > > which is backed by the spec at
> > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://ozlabs.org/*rusty/virtio-spec/virtio-0.9.5.pdf__;fg!!ACWV5N9M2RV99hQ!dTKmzJwwRsFM7BtSuTDu1cNly5n4XCotH0WYmidzGqHSXt40i7ZU43UcNg7GYxZg$ . Though I'm not sure
> > > if there's request/need to support wilder legacy virtio versions earlier
> > > beyond.
> > I personally feel it's less work to add in kernel than try to
> > work around it in userspace. Jason feels differently.
> > Maybe post the patches and this will prove to Jason it's not
> > too terrible?
> I suppose if the vdpa vendor does support 0.95 in the datapath and ring
> layout level and is limited to x86 only, there should be easy way out.

Note a subtle difference: what matters is that guest, not host is x86.
Matters for emulators which might reorder memory accesses.
I guess this enforcement belongs in QEMU then?

> I
> checked with Eli and other Mellanox/NVDIA folks for hardware/firmware level
> 0.95 support, it seems all the ingredient had been there already dated back
> to the DPDK days. The only major thing limiting is in the vDPA software that
> the current vdpa core has the assumption around VIRTIO_F_ACCESS_PLATFORM for
> a few DMA setup ops, which is virtio 1.0 only.
> 
> > 
> > > 2. suppose some form of legacy guest support needs to be there, how do we
> > > deal with the bogus assumption below in vdpa_get_config() in the short term?
> > > It looks one of the intuitive fix is to move the vdpa_set_features call out
> > > of vdpa_get_config() to vdpa_set_config().
> > > 
> > >          /*
> > >           * Config accesses aren't supposed to trigger before features are
> > > set.
> > >           * If it does happen we assume a legacy guest.
> > >           */
> > >          if (!vdev->features_valid)
> > >                  vdpa_set_features(vdev, 0);
> > >          ops->get_config(vdev, offset, buf, len);
> > > 
> > > I can post a patch to fix 2) if there's consensus already reached.
> > > 
> > > Thanks,
> > > -Siwei
> > I'm not sure how important it is to change that.
> > In any case it only affects transitional devices, right?
> > Legacy only should not care ...
> Yes I'd like to distinguish legacy driver (suppose it is 0.95) against the
> modern one in a transitional device model rather than being legacy only.
> That way a v0.95 and v1.0 supporting vdpa parent can support both types of
> guests without having to reconfigure. Or are you suggesting limit to legacy
> only at the time of vdpa creation would simplify the implementation a lot?
> 
> Thanks,
> -Siwei


I don't know for sure. Take a look at the work Halil was doing
to try and support transitional devices with BE guests.


> > 
> > > On 3/2/2021 2:53 AM, Jason Wang wrote:
> > > > On 2021/3/2 5:47 下午, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > > > > On Mon, Mar 01, 2021 at 11:56:50AM +0800, Jason Wang wrote:
> > > > > > On 2021/3/1 5:34 上午, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > > > > > > On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 10:24:41AM -0800, Si-Wei Liu wrote:
> > > > > > > > > Detecting it isn't enough though, we will need a new ioctl to notify
> > > > > > > > > the kernel that it's a legacy guest. Ugh :(
> > > > > > > > Well, although I think adding an ioctl is doable, may I
> > > > > > > > know what the use
> > > > > > > > case there will be for kernel to leverage such info
> > > > > > > > directly? Is there a
> > > > > > > > case QEMU can't do with dedicate ioctls later if there's indeed
> > > > > > > > differentiation (legacy v.s. modern) needed?
> > > > > > > BTW a good API could be
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > #define VHOST_SET_ENDIAN _IOW(VHOST_VIRTIO, ?, int)
> > > > > > > #define VHOST_GET_ENDIAN _IOW(VHOST_VIRTIO, ?, int)
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > we did it per vring but maybe that was a mistake ...
> > > > > > Actually, I wonder whether it's good time to just not support
> > > > > > legacy driver
> > > > > > for vDPA. Consider:
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > 1) It's definition is no-normative
> > > > > > 2) A lot of budren of codes
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > So qemu can still present the legacy device since the config
> > > > > > space or other
> > > > > > stuffs that is presented by vhost-vDPA is not expected to be
> > > > > > accessed by
> > > > > > guest directly. Qemu can do the endian conversion when necessary
> > > > > > in this
> > > > > > case?
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Thanks
> > > > > > 
> > > > > Overall I would be fine with this approach but we need to avoid breaking
> > > > > working userspace, qemu releases with vdpa support are out there and
> > > > > seem to work for people. Any changes need to take that into account
> > > > > and document compatibility concerns.
> > > > 
> > > > Agree, let me check.
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > >    I note that any hardware
> > > > > implementation is already broken for legacy except on platforms with
> > > > > strong ordering which might be helpful in reducing the scope.
> > > > 
> > > > Yes.
> > > > 
> > > > Thanks
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > >