Re: [RFC][PATCH] virtio balloon: kill tell-host-first logic

From: Rusty Russell
Date: Sat Apr 09 2011 - 20:42:16 EST


On Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:43:25 -0700, Dave Hansen <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> The virtio balloon driver has a VIRTIO_BALLOON_F_MUST_TELL_HOST
> feature bit. Whenever the bit is set, we must always tell the
> host before we free pages back to the allocator. Without this
> we might free a page (and have another user touch it) while the
> hypervisor is unprepared for it.
>
> But, if the bit is _not_ set, we are under no obligation to
> reverse the order. Furthermore, all modern qemus set this bit.
> So, the "tell second" code is completely unused and untestable.
> Quoting Anthony: "untested code is broken code".
>
> This _also_ means that we don't have to preserve a pfn list
> after the pages are freed, which should let us get rid of some
> temporary storage (vb->pfns) eventually.
>
> Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Thanks, applied!

Rusty.
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