netdev - Re: [PATCH] net: virtio_vsock: Fix race condition between bind and listen

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Date:   Thu, 13 Feb 2020 14:04:58 +0100
From:   Stefano Garzarella <sgarzare@...hat.com>
To:     Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@...hat.com>
Cc:     "Boeuf, Sebastien" <sebastien.boeuf@...el.com>,
        "netdev@...r.kernel.org" <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
        "davem@...emloft.net" <davem@...emloft.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] net: virtio_vsock: Fix race condition between bind and
 listen

On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 11:39:49AM +0000, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 10:44:18AM +0000, Boeuf, Sebastien wrote:
> > On Thu, 2020-02-13 at 11:22 +0100, Stefano Garzarella wrote:
> > > On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 09:51:36AM +0000, Boeuf, Sebastien wrote:
> > > > Hi Stefano,
> > > > 
> > > > On Thu, 2020-02-13 at 10:41 +0100, Stefano Garzarella wrote:
> > > > > Hi Sebastien,
> > > > > 
> > > > > On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 09:16:11AM +0000, Boeuf, Sebastien wrote:
> > > > > > From 2f1276d02f5a12d85aec5adc11dfe1eab7e160d6 Mon Sep 17
> > > > > > 00:00:00
> > > > > > 2001
> > > > > > From: Sebastien Boeuf <sebastien.boeuf@...el.com>
> > > > > > Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2020 08:50:38 +0100
> > > > > > Subject: [PATCH] net: virtio_vsock: Fix race condition between
> > > > > > bind
> > > > > > and listen
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Whenever the vsock backend on the host sends a packet through
> > > > > > the
> > > > > > RX
> > > > > > queue, it expects an answer on the TX queue. Unfortunately,
> > > > > > there
> > > > > > is one
> > > > > > case where the host side will hang waiting for the answer and
> > > > > > will
> > > > > > effectively never recover.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Do you have a test case?
> > > > 
> > > > Yes I do. This has been a bug we've been investigating on Kata
> > > > Containers for quite some time now. This was happening when using
> > > > Kata
> > > > along with Cloud-Hypervisor (which rely on the hybrid vsock
> > > > implementation from Firecracker). The thing is, this bug is very
> > > > hard
> > > > to reproduce and was happening for Kata because of the connection
> > > > strategy. The kata-runtime tries to connect a million times after
> > > > it
> > > > started the VM, just hoping the kata-agent will start to listen
> > > > from
> > > > the guest side at some point.
> > > 
> > > Maybe is related to something else. I tried the following which
> > > should be
> > > your case simplified (IIUC):
> > > 
> > > guest$ python
> > >     import socket
> > >     s = socket.socket(socket.AF_VSOCK, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
> > >     s.bind((socket.VMADDR_CID_ANY, 1234))
> > > 
> > > host$ python
> > >     import socket
> > >     s = socket.socket(socket.AF_VSOCK, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
> > >     s.connect((3, 1234))
> > > 
> > > Traceback (most recent call last):
> > >   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
> > > TimeoutError: [Errno 110] Connection timed out
> > 
> > Yes this is exactly the simplified case. But that's the point, I don't
> > think the timeout is the best way to go here. Because this means that
> > when we run into this case, the host side will wait for quite some time
> > before retrying, which can cause a very long delay before the
> > communication with the guest is established. By simply answering the
> > host with a RST packet, we inform it that nobody's listening on the
> > guest side yet, therefore the host side will close and try again.
> 
> My expectation is that TCP/IP will produce ECONNREFUSED in this case but
> I haven't checked.  Timing out is weird behavior.

I just tried and yes, TCP/IP produces ECONNREFUSED. The same error returned
when no one's bound to the port.

Instead virtio-vsock returns ECONNRESET in the last case.
I'm not sure it's correct (looking at the man page connect(2) it would
seem not), but if I understood correctly VMCI returns the same
ECONNRESET in this case.

> 
> In any case, the reference for virtio-vsock semantics is:
> 1. How does VMCI (VMware) vsock behave?  We strive to be compatible with
> the VMCI transport.

Looking at the code, it looks like VMCI returns ECONNRESET in this case,
so this patch should be okay. (I haven't tried it)

> 2. If there is no clear VMCI behavior, then we look at TCP/IP because
> those semantics are expected by most applications.
> 
> This bug needs a test case in tools/testings/vsock/ and that test case
> will run against VMCI, virtio-vsock, and Hyper-V.  Doing that will
> answer the question of how VMCI handles this case.

I agree.

Thanks,
Stefano