Re: [PATCH v16.1 6/9] virtio-balloon: Add support for providing free page reports to host

[Michael S. Tsirkin]

On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 01:19:31PM +0100, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> >>
> >> Did you see the discussion regarding unifying handling of
> >> inflate/deflate/free_page_hinting_free_page_reporting, requested by
> >> Michael? I think free page reporting is special and shall be left alone.
> > 
> > Not sure what do you mean by "left alone here". Could you clarify?
> 
> Don't try to unify handling like I proposed below, because it's
> semantics are special.
> 
> > 
> >> VIRTIO_BALLOON_F_REPORTING is nothing but a more advanced inflate, right
> >> (sg, inflate based on size - not "virtio pages")?
> > 
> > 
> > Not exactly - it's also initiated by guest as opposed to host, and
> > not guided by the ballon size request set by the host.
> 
> True, but AFAIKS you could use existing INFLATE/DEFLATE in a similar
> way. There is no way for the hypervisor to nack a request. The balloon
> size is not glued to inflate/deflate requests. The guests manually
> updates it.

Hmm how isn't it? num_pages is the only way to inflate/deflate.

Spec also says:
The device is driven either by the receipt of a configuration change notification, or by changing guest memory
needs, such as performing memory compaction or responding to out of memory conditions.

so ignoring compaction/oom (later is under-specified, not a good example
to follow) yes inflate/deflate are tied to host specified configuration.


> > And uses a dedicated queue to avoid blocking other functionality ...
> 
> True, but the other queues also don't allow for an easy extension
> AFAIKS, so that's another reason.
> 
> > 
> > I really think this is more like an inflate immediately followed by deflate.
> 
> Depends on how you look at it. As inflate/deflate is not glued to the
> balloon size (the guest updates the size manually), it's not obvious.
> 
> E.g., in QEMU, a deflate is just a performance improvement
> ("MADV_WILLNEED") - in that regard, it's more like an optional deflation.
> 
> [...]
> 
> > 
> > I'd rather wait until we have a usecase and preferably a POC
> > showing it helps before we add optional deflate ...
> > For now I personally am fine with just making this go ahead as is,
> > and imply SG and OPTIONAL_DEFLATE just for this VQ.
> 
> Also fine with me, you asked about if we can abstract any of this if I
> am not wrong :) So this was my take.
> 
> > 
> > Do you feel strongly we need to bring this up to a TC vote?
> 
> Not really. People have been asking about how to inflate/deflate huge
> pages a long time ago (comes with different challenges - e.g., balloon
> compaction). looked like this interface could have been reused for this
> as well.
> 
> But yeah, I am not a fan of virtio-balloon and the whole inflate/deflate
> thingy. So at least I don't see a need to extend the inflate/deflate
> capability.
> 
> Free page reporting is a different story (and the semantics require no
> inflate/deflate/balloon size) - it could have been moved to
> virtio-whatever without any issues. So I am fine with this.
> 
> -- 
> Thanks,
> 
> David / dhildenb