From: Thomas Monjalon <thomas@monjalon.net>
To: "Burakov, Anatoly" <anatoly.burakov@intel.com>
Cc: David Marchand <david.marchand@redhat.com>, dev <dev@dpdk.org>,
John McNamara <john.mcnamara@intel.com>,
Marko Kovacevic <marko.kovacevic@intel.com>,
iain.barker@oracle.com, edwin.leung@oracle.com,
maxime.coquelin@redhat.com
Subject: Re: [dpdk-dev] [PATCH] eal: add option to not store segment fd's
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2019 13:40:14 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <3255576.YcZt162MTL@xps> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <b6ce21eb-dae1-7858-a03a-6a5c1b6a35eb@intel.com>
29/03/2019 13:05, Burakov, Anatoly:
> On 29-Mar-19 11:34 AM, Thomas Monjalon wrote:
> > 29/03/2019 11:33, Burakov, Anatoly:
> >> On 29-Mar-19 9:50 AM, David Marchand wrote:
> >>> On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 6:12 PM Anatoly Burakov
> >>> <anatoly.burakov@intel.com <mailto:anatoly.burakov@intel.com>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Due to internal glibc limitations [1], DPDK may exhaust internal
> >>> file descriptor limits when using smaller page sizes, which results
> >>> in inability to use system calls such as select() by user
> >>> applications.
> >>>
> >>> While the problem can be worked around using --single-file-segments
> >>> option, it does not work if --legacy-mem mode is also used. Add a
> >>> (yet another) EAL flag to disable storing fd's internally. This
> >>> will sacrifice compability with Virtio with vhost-backend, but
> >>> at least select() and friends will work.
> >>>
> >>> [1] https://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2019-February/124386.html
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Sorry, I am a bit lost and I never took the time to look in the new
> >>> memory allocation system.
> >>> This gives the impression that we are accumulating workarounds, between
> >>> legacy-mem, single-file-segments, now no-seg-fds.
> >>
> >> Yep. I don't like this any more than you do, but i think there are users
> >> of all of these, so we can't just drop them willy-nilly. My great hope
> >> was that by now everyone would move on to use VFIO so legacy mem
> >> wouldn't be needed (the only reason it exists is to provide
> >> compatibility for use cases where lots of IOVA-contiguous memory is
> >> required, and VFIO cannot be used), but apparently that is too much to
> >> ask :/
> >>
> >>>
> >>> Iiuc, everything revolves around the need for per page locks.
> >>> Can you summarize why we need them?
> >>
> >> The short answer is multiprocess. We have to be able to map and unmap
> >> pages individually, and for that we need to be sure that we can, in
> >> fact, remove a page because no one else uses it. We also need to store
> >> fd's because virtio with vhost-user backend needs them to work, because
> >> it relies on sharing memory between processes using fd's.
> >
> > It's a pity adding an option to workaround a limitation of a corner case.
> > It adds complexity that we will have to support forever,
> > and it's even not perfect because of vhost.
> >
> > Might there be another solution?
> >
>
> If there is one, i'm all ears. I don't see any solutions aside from
> adding limitations.
>
> For example, we could drop the single/multi file segments mode and just
> make single file segments a default and the only available mode, but
> this has certain risks because older kernels do not support fallocate()
> on hugetlbfs.
>
> We could further draw a line in the sand, and say that, for example,
> 19.11 (or 20.11) will not have legacy mem mode, and everyone should use
> VFIO by now and if you don't it's your own fault.
>
> We could also cut down on the number of fd's we use in single-file
> segments mode by not using locks and simply deleting pages in the
> primary, but yanking out hugepages from under secondaries' feet makes me
> feel uneasy, even if technically by the time that happens, they're not
> supposed to be used anyway. This could mean that the patch is no longer
> necessary because we don't use that many fd's any more.
This last option is interesting. Is it realistic?
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-03-29 12:40 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 25+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-02-22 17:12 Anatoly Burakov
2019-03-29 9:50 ` David Marchand
2019-03-29 9:50 ` David Marchand
2019-03-29 10:33 ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-03-29 10:33 ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-03-29 11:34 ` Thomas Monjalon
2019-03-29 11:34 ` Thomas Monjalon
2019-03-29 12:05 ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-03-29 12:05 ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-03-29 12:40 ` Thomas Monjalon [this message]
2019-03-29 12:40 ` Thomas Monjalon
2019-03-29 13:24 ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-03-29 13:24 ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-03-29 13:34 ` Thomas Monjalon
2019-03-29 13:34 ` Thomas Monjalon
2019-03-29 14:21 ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-03-29 14:21 ` Burakov, Anatoly
2019-03-29 13:35 ` Maxime Coquelin
2019-03-29 13:35 ` Maxime Coquelin
2019-03-29 17:55 ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCH v2 1/2] memalloc: refactor segment resizing code Anatoly Burakov
2019-03-29 17:55 ` Anatoly Burakov
2019-03-29 17:55 ` [dpdk-dev] [PATCH v2 2/2] memalloc: do not use lockfiles for single file segments mode Anatoly Burakov
2019-03-29 17:55 ` Anatoly Burakov
2019-04-02 14:08 ` Thomas Monjalon
2019-04-02 14:08 ` Thomas Monjalon
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