netdev - Re: [net-next v2] xen-netback: improve guest-receive-side flow control

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Date:	Mon, 09 Dec 2013 20:33:37 -0500 (EST)
From:	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>
To:	paul.durrant@...rix.com
Cc:	xen-devel@...ts.xen.org, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
	wei.liu2@...rix.com, ian.campbell@...rix.com,
	david.vrabel@...rix.com, annie.li@...cle.com,
	konrad.wilk@...cle.com
Subject: Re: [net-next v2] xen-netback: improve guest-receive-side flow
 control

From: Paul Durrant <paul.durrant@...rix.com>
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2013 16:36:07 +0000

> The way that flow control works without this patch is that, in start_xmit()
> the code uses xenvif_count_skb_slots() to predict how many slots
> xenvif_gop_skb() will consume and then adds this to a 'req_cons_peek'
> counter which it then uses to determine if the shared ring has that amount
> of space available by checking whether 'req_prod' has passed that value.
> If the ring doesn't have space the tx queue is stopped.
> xenvif_gop_skb() will then consume slots and update 'req_cons' and issue
> responses, updating 'rsp_prod' as it goes. The frontend will consume those
> responses and post new requests, by updating req_prod. So, req_prod chases
> req_cons which chases rsp_prod, and can never exceed that value. Thus if
> xenvif_count_skb_slots() ever returns a number of slots greater than
> xenvif_gop_skb() uses, req_cons_peek will get to a value that req_prod cannot
> possibly achieve (since it's limited by the 'real' req_cons) and, if this
> happens enough times, req_cons_peek gets more than a ring size ahead of
> req_cons and the tx queue then remains stopped forever waiting for an
> unachievable amount of space to become available in the ring.
> 
> Having two routines trying to calculate the same value is always going to be
> fragile, so this patch does away with that. All we essentially need to do is
> make sure that we have 'enough stuff' on our internal queue without letting
> it build up uncontrollably. So start_xmit() makes a cheap optimistic check
> of how much space is needed for an skb and only turns the queue off if that
> is unachievable. net_rx_action() is the place where we could do with an
> accurate predicition but, since that has proven tricky to calculate, a cheap
> worse-case (but not too bad) estimate is all we really need since the only
> thing we *must* prevent is xenvif_gop_skb() consuming more slots than are
> available.
> 
> Without this patch I can trivially stall netback permanently by just doing
> a large guest to guest file copy between two Windows Server 2008R2 VMs on a
> single host.
> 
> Patch tested with frontends in:
> - Windows Server 2008R2
> - CentOS 6.0
> - Debian Squeeze
> - Debian Wheezy
> - SLES11
> 
> Signed-off-by: Paul Durrant <paul.durrant@...rix.com>

Applied, thanks.
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