Re: [PATCH net] virtio-net: reject small vring sizes

[Alvaro Karsz]

> > > Actually, I think that all you need to do is disable NETIF_F_SG,
> > > and things will work, no?
> >
> > I think that this is not so simple, if I understand correctly, by disabling NETIF_F_SG we will never receive a chained skbs to transmit, but we still have more functionality to address, for example:
> > * The TX timeouts.
> 
> I don't get it. With a linear skb we can transmit it as long as there's
> space for 2 entries in the vq: header and data. What's the source of the
> timeouts?
> 

I'm not saying that this is not possible, I meant that we need more changes to virtio-net.
The source of the timeouts is from the current implementation of virtnet_poll_tx.

if (sq->vq->num_free >= 2 + MAX_SKB_FRAGS)
	netif_tx_wake_queue(txq);


> > * Guest GSO/big MTU (without VIRTIO_NET_F_MRG_RXBUF?), we can't chain page size buffers anymore.
> 
> I think we can.  mergeable_min_buf_len will just be large.
> 

I meant that we can't just by clearing NETIF_F_SG, we'll need to change virtio-net a little bit more, for example, the virtnet_set_big_packets function.