Re: [PATCH v3 4/4] xen-blkback: support dynamic unbind/bind

[Roger Pau Monné]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 03:29:56PM +0000, Paul Durrant wrote:
> By simply re-attaching to shared rings during connect_ring() rather than
> assuming they are freshly allocated (i.e assuming the counters are zero)
> it is possible for vbd instances to be unbound and re-bound from and to
> (respectively) a running guest.
> 
> This has been tested by running:
> 
> while true;
>   do fio --name=randwrite --ioengine=libaio --iodepth=16 \
>   --rw=randwrite --bs=4k --direct=1 --size=1G --verify=crc32;
>   done
> 
> in a PV guest whilst running:
> 
> while true;
>   do echo vbd-$DOMID-$VBD >unbind;
>   echo unbound;
>   sleep 5;
>   echo vbd-$DOMID-$VBD >bind;
>   echo bound;
>   sleep 3;
>   done
> 
> in dom0 from /sys/bus/xen-backend/drivers/vbd to continuously unbind and
> re-bind its system disk image.
> 
> This is a highly useful feature for a backend module as it allows it to be
> unloaded and re-loaded (i.e. updated) without requiring domUs to be halted.
> This was also tested by running:
> 
> while true;
>   do echo vbd-$DOMID-$VBD >unbind;
>   echo unbound;
>   sleep 5;
>   rmmod xen-blkback;
>   echo unloaded;
>   sleep 1;
>   modprobe xen-blkback;
>   echo bound;
>   cd $(pwd);
>   sleep 3;
>   done
> 
> in dom0 whilst running the same loop as above in the (single) PV guest.
> 
> Some (less stressful) testing has also been done using a Windows HVM guest
> with the latest 9.0 PV drivers installed.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Paul Durrant <pdurrant@xxxxxxxxxx>

Reviewed-by: Roger Pau Monné <roger.pau@xxxxxxxxxx>

Thanks!

Juergen: I guess you will also pick this series and merge it from the
Xen tree instead of the block one?

Roger.