Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/4] Add ignore-external migration capability

[Dr. David Alan Gilbert]

* Yury Kotov (address@hidden) wrote:
> 10.01.2019, 23:12, "Dr. David Alan Gilbert" <address@hidden>:
> > * Yury Kotov (address@hidden) wrote:
> >>  Hi,
> >>
> >>  The series adds migration capability which allows to skip 'external' RAM 
> >> blocks
> >>  during migration. External block is a RAMBlock which available from the 
> >> outside
> >>  of current QEMU process (e.g. file in /dev/shm). It's useful for fast 
> >> local
> >>  migration to update QEMU for the running guests.
> >
> > Hi Yury,
> >   There have been a few similar patch series around from people wanting
> > to do similar things.
> >   In particular Lai Jiangshan's 
> > https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2018-03/msg07511.html
> > and Cédric Le Goater wanted to skip regions for a different reason.
> >
> >   We merged some of Cédric's code last year so that we now
> > have the qemu_ram_is_migratable() function - and we should be reusing
> > that to skip things rather than adding a new check that we have to add
> > everywhere.
> >
> 
> I didn't see the series, so I'll check it, thanks!
> But I saw qemu_ram_is_migratable() function and corresponding patch.
> It's very close to my needs, but it works a bit different IIUC:
> 1. Not migratable blocks isn't validated (existence and size) during 
> migration,
> 2. "Migratable" state is determined during the block creation time.
>    Such case isn't valid because of it:
>    * Source has one migratable and one not migratable RAM blocks,
>    * Target has the same (idstr) blocks, but both are not migratable.
>    Thus, target will not expect pages for not migratable blocks.

I've added Cédric to the mail;
there were other cases people were interested in, including switching
it dynamically, just no one else used it yet.

I'd prefer it if you did modify the is_migratable - that will fix a lot
of other places in the migration code to avoid your blocks;  I think the
best thing is for you to add a spearate 'needs_migration_check' for
those blocks like yours which you want to check but you don't send the
data.  Please don't change the format of the migratino stream except
in the case where you are sending those to be checked.

> >   Also, ypu're skipping 'external' things, I think the other suggestion
> > was to skip 'shared' things (i.e. anything with share=0); skipping
> > share=on cases sounds easier to me.
> 
> I agree that introducing new term is a complication, but 'share' and 
> 'external'
> terms have important differences (I'll describe it below).
> 
> Just to clarify:
> * 'share' means that other processes has an access to such memory,
> * 'external' means file backed memory.
> 
> There is another use case I wanted to support (I had to write about it in
> the cover letter, sorry..):
> 1. Migrate source VM to file and kill source,
> 2. Start target VM and migrate it from file.
> In such case source VM may have memory-backend-ram with share=off, it's ok.
> 
> Thus, in the new migration capability I want to migrate memory that meets
> three conditions:
> 1. The source will not use the memory after migration ends,
> 2. The source may exit before target starts (migrate to file),
> 3. The target has an access to the memory.
> 
> I think 'external' fits them better than 'share'.

Are you sure that with share=off (the default), in the case where the
source shuts down, that the changes have been written to the backing
file?

I'm also wondering if perhaps we'd be better having an explicit
migrate=off property on memory objects rather than trying to guess from
the share= or the fact it's an external path.

Igor: Does that make sense to you?

Dave

> >
> > Dave
> >
> >>  Patches:
> >>  1. Add offset validation to make sure that external RAM block has the same
> >>     physical offset on target side,
> >>  2. Add RAM_EXTERNAL flag to determine external RAM blocks,
> >>  3. Add ignore-external migration capability,
> >>  4. Add a test.
> >>
> >>  Usage example:
> >>  1. Start source VM:
> >>     qemu-system-x86 \
> >>       -m 4G \
> >>       -object 
> >> memory-backend-file,id=mem0,size=4G,share=on,mem-path=/dev/shm/mem0 \
> >>       -numa node,memdev=mem0 \
> >>       -qmp unix:/tmp/qemu-qmp-1.sock,server,nowait \
> >>
> >>  2. Start target VM:
> >>     qemu-system-x86 \
> >>       -m 4G \
> >>       -object 
> >> memory-backend-file,id=mem0,size=4G,share=on,mem-path=/dev/shm/mem0 \
> >>       -numa node,memdev=mem0 \
> >>       -qmp unix:/tmp/qemu-qmp-2.sock,server,nowait \
> >>       -incoming defer
> >>
> >>  3. Enable ignore-external capability on both VMs:
> >>     { "execute": "migrate-set-capabilities" , "arguments":
> >>       { "capabilities": [ { "capability": "x-ignore-external", "state": 
> >> true } ] } }
> >>
> >>  4. Start migration.
> >>
> >>  Regards,
> >>  Yury
> >>
> >>  Yury Kotov (4):
> >>    migration: add RAMBlock's offset validation
> >>    exec: add RAM_EXTERNAL flag to mark non-QEMU allocated blocks
> >>    migration: introduce ignore-external capability
> >>    tests/migration-test: Add a test for ignore-external capability
> >>
> >>   backends/hostmem-file.c | 3 +-
> >>   exec.c | 7 ++-
> >>   include/exec/cpu-common.h | 1 +
> >>   include/exec/memory.h | 3 ++
> >>   migration/migration.c | 9 ++++
> >>   migration/migration.h | 1 +
> >>   migration/ram.c | 52 ++++++++++++++++--
> >>   numa.c | 4 +-
> >>   qapi/migration.json | 6 ++-
> >>   tests/migration-test.c | 109 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------
> >>   10 files changed, 165 insertions(+), 30 deletions(-)
> >>
> >>  --
> >>  2.20.1
> > --
> > Dr. David Alan Gilbert / address@hidden / Manchester, UK
> 
> Regards,
> Yury
--
Dr. David Alan Gilbert / address@hidden / Manchester, UK