Re: [RFC] Device isolation infrastructure v2

[Alex Williamson]

On Thu, 2011-12-15 at 11:05 -0700, Alex Williamson wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-12-15 at 17:25 +1100, David Gibson wrote:
> > Here's the second spin of my preferred approach to handling grouping
> > of devices for safe assignment to guests.
> > 
> > Changes since v1:
> >  * Many name changes and file moves for improved consistency
> >  * Bugfixes and cleanups
> >  * The interface to the next layer up is considerably fleshed out,
> >    although it still needs work.
> >  * Example initialization of groups for p5ioc2 and p7ioc.
> > 
> > TODO:
> >  * Need sample initialization of groups for intel and/or amd iommus
> 
> I think this very well might imposed significant bloat for those
> implementations.  On POWER you typically don't have singleton groups,
> while it's the norm on x86.  I don't know that either intel or amd iommu
> code have existing structures that they can simply tack the group
> pointer to.  Again, this is one of the reasons that I think the current
> vfio implementation is the right starting point.  We keep groups within
> vfio, imposing zero overhead for systems not making use of it and only
> require iommu drivers to implement a trivial function to opt-in.  As we
> start to make groups more pervasive in the dma layer, independent of
> userspace driver exposure, we can offload pieces to the core.  Starting
> with it in the core and hand waving some future use that we don't plan
> to implement right now seems like the wrong direction.
> 
> >  * Use of sysfs attributes to control group permission is probably a
> >    mistake.  Although it seems a bit odd, registering a chardev for
> >    each group is probably better, because perms can be set from udev
> >    rules, just like everything else.
> 
> I agree, this is a horrible mistake.  Reinventing file permissions via
> sysfs is bound to be broken and doesn't account for selinux permissions.
> Again, I know you don't like aspects of the vfio group management, but
> it gets this right imho.
> 
> >  * Need more details of what the binder structure will need to
> >    contain.
> >  * Handle complete removal of groups.
> >  * Clarify what will need to happen on the hot unplug path.
> 
> We're still also removing devices from the driver model, this means
> drivers like vfio need to re-implement a lot of the driver core for
> driving each individual device in the group, and as you indicate, it's
> unclear what happens in the hotplug path and I wonder if things like
> suspend/resume will also require non-standard support.  I really prefer
> attaching individual bus drivers to devices using the standard
> bind/unbind mechanisms.  I have a hard time seeing how this is an
> improvement from vfio.  Thanks,

I should also mention that I just pushed a new version of the vfio
series out to github, it can be found here:

git://github.com/awilliam/linux-vfio.git vfio-next-20111215

This fixes many bugs, including PCI config space access sizes and the
todo item of actually preventing user access to the MSI-X table area.  I
think the vfio-pci driver is much closer to being read to submit now.
It think I've addressed all the previous review comments.  Still pending
is a documentation refresh and some decision about what and how we
expose iommu information.

As usual, the matching qemu tree is here:

git://github.com/awilliam/qemu-vfio.git vfio-ng

I've tested this with an Intel 82576 (both PF and VF), Broadcom BCM5755,
Intel HD Audio controller, and legacy PCI SB Live.  Thanks,

Alex

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