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vhost: a kernel-level virtio server

PATCH Superseded Michael S. Tsirkin 2 participants 3 messages Aug 19, 2009 – Aug 25, 2009

Subsystems (5)

v4 of 9 Superseded Latest is v9 →

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Michael S. Tsirkin

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#0 lore raw

v4 cover vhost: a kernel-level virtio server

Rusty, could you review and comment on the patches please? Since most of the code deals with virtio from host side, I think it will make sense to merge them through your tree. What do you think?

One comment on placement: I put files under a separate vhost directory to avoid confusion with virtio-net which runs in guest. Does this sound sane? If not let me know and I'll move them.

Thanks!

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This implements vhost: a kernel-level backend for virtio, The main motivation for this work is to reduce virtualization overhead for virtio by removing system calls on data path, without guest changes. For virtio-net, this removes up to 4 system calls per packet: vm exit for kick, reentry for kick, iothread wakeup for packet, interrupt injection for packet.

This driver is as minimal as possible and does not implement any virtio optional features, but it's fully functional (including migration support), and already shows a latency improvement over userspace.

Some more detailed description attached to the patch itself.

The patches are against 2.6.31-rc4. I'd like them to go into linux-next and down the road 2.6.32 if possible. Please comment.

Changelog from v3:
- checkpatch fixes

Changelog from v2:
- Comments on RCU usage
- Compat ioctl support
- Make variable static
- Copied more idiomatic english from Rusty

Changes from v1:
- Move use_mm/unuse_mm from fs/aio.c to mm instead of copying.
- Reorder code to avoid need for forward declarations
- Kill a couple of debugging printks

Michael S. Tsirkin (2):
mm: export use_mm/unuse_mm to modules
vhost_net: a kernel-level virtio server

 MAINTAINERS                 |   10 +
 arch/x86/kvm/Kconfig        |    1 +
 drivers/Makefile            |    1 +
 drivers/vhost/Kconfig       |   11 +
 drivers/vhost/Makefile      |    2 +
 drivers/vhost/net.c         |  429 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 drivers/vhost/vhost.c       |  664 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 drivers/vhost/vhost.h       |  108 +++++++
 fs/aio.c                    |   47 +---
 include/linux/Kbuild        |    1 +
 include/linux/miscdevice.h  |    1 +
 include/linux/mmu_context.h |    9 +
 include/linux/vhost.h       |  100 +++++++
 mm/Makefile                 |    2 +-
 mm/mmu_context.c            |   58 ++++
 15 files changed, 1397 insertions(+), 47 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 drivers/vhost/Kconfig
 create mode 100644 drivers/vhost/Makefile
 create mode 100644 drivers/vhost/net.c
 create mode 100644 drivers/vhost/vhost.c
 create mode 100644 drivers/vhost/vhost.h
 create mode 100644 include/linux/mmu_context.h
 create mode 100644 include/linux/vhost.h
 create mode 100644 mm/mmu_context.c

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#1 lore raw
Quoted 3 lines · Michael S. Tsirkin

Rusty, could you review and comment on the patches please? Since most of the code deals with virtio from host side, I think it will make sense to merge them through your tree. What do you think?

Yep, I've been waiting for all the other comments, then I got ill.

Now I'm all recovered, what better way to spend an evening than reviewing fresh code?

New dir seems fine to me, too.

Thanks,
Rusty.

#2 lore raw
In reply to Michael S. Tsirkin
Quoted 3 lines · Michael S. Tsirkin

Rusty, could you review and comment on the patches please? Since most of the code deals with virtio from host side, I think it will make sense to merge them through your tree. What do you think?

Yep, I've been waiting for all the other comments, then I got ill.

Now I'm all recovered, what better way to spend an evening than reviewing fresh code?

New dir seems fine to me, too.

Thanks,
Rusty.