Re: [PATCH v1 07/17] migration/rdma: Use ram_block_discard_set_broken()

[Dr. David Alan Gilbert]

* David Hildenbrand (address@hidden) wrote:
> On 15.05.20 14:45, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:
> > * David Hildenbrand (address@hidden) wrote:
> >> RDMA will pin all guest memory (as documented in docs/rdma.txt). We want
> >> to mark RAM block discards to be broken - however, to keep it simple
> >> use ram_block_discard_is_required() instead of inhibiting.
> > 
> > Should this be dependent on whether rdma->pin_all is set?
> > Even with !pin_all some will be pinned at any given time
> > (when it's registered with the rdma stack).
> 
> Do you know how much memory this is? Is such memory only temporarily pinned?

With pin_all not set, only a subset of memory, I think multiple 1MB
chunks, are pinned at any one time.

> At least with special-cases of vfio, it's acceptable if some memory is
> temporarily pinned - we assume it's only the working set of the driver,
> which guests will not inflate as long as they don't want to shoot
> themselves in the foot.
> 
> This here sounds like the guest does not know the pinned memory is
> special, right?

Right - for RDMA it's all of memory that's being transferred, and the
guest doesn't see when each part is transferred.

Dave

> -- 
> Thanks,
> 
> David / dhildenb
--
Dr. David Alan Gilbert / address@hidden / Manchester, UK