RE: [PATCH v2] hv: retry infinitely on hypercall transient failures

[Long Li]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Greg KH [mailto:greg@xxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Friday, January 06, 2017 11:43 PM
> To: Long Li <longli@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: KY Srinivasan <kys@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Haiyang Zhang
> <haiyangz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; linux-
> kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] hv: retry infinitely on hypercall transient failures
> 
> On Sat, Jan 07, 2017 at 07:23:14AM +0000, Long Li wrote:
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Greg KH [mailto:greg@xxxxxxxxx]
> > > Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2017 11:48 PM
> > > To: Long Li <longli@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > Cc: KY Srinivasan <kys@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Haiyang Zhang
> > > <haiyangz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; linux-
> > > kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] hv: retry infinitely on hypercall transient
> > > failures
> > >
> > > On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 06:12:20PM -0800, Long Li wrote:
> > > > From: Long Li <longli@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > >
> > > > Hyper-v host guarantees that a hypercall will finish in reasonable time.
> > > > Retry infinitely on transient failures to avoid returning error to upper
> layer.
> > >
> > > Again, never retry "forever", always have a way out, otherwise you will
> crash.
> > >
> > > And again, why are you making this change?  What problem does it solve?
> >
> > The problem it tries to solve is that in this code we are returning
> > error prematurely on transient failures. The hypercall is used mostly
> > in channel establishment. If we return a transient failure, the VM may
> > not boot or not useful after boot due to some devices missing.
> >
> > Another approach is to increase the number of retries. But we don't
> > know how many retries is safe, and Windows host side expects the guest
> > retry infinitely and not return error on transient failures.
> 
> That implies a lot of trust in the host side, don't you think?
> 
> Worse case, make the delay a minute or so, but give the system a way out
> incase there's a bug in the host.  As there will be bugs in the host, just like
> there are bugs in the client :)

This makes sense. 1 minute is a long time for a hypercall. I will send V3.

> 
> thanks,
> 
> greg k-h