Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCHv3] QEMU(upstream): Disable xen's use of O_DIRECT by default as it results in crashes.

[Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Il 19/03/2013 11:06, George Dunlap ha scritto:
> On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 6:00 PM, Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Il 18/03/2013 18:38, George Dunlap ha scritto:
>>>>>
>>>> This might be a difference between Xen and KVM. On Xen migration is
>>>> made to a server in a paused state, and it's only unpaused when
>>>> the migration to B is complete. There's a sort of extra handshake at
>>>> the end.
>>>
>>> I think what you mean is that all the memory is handled by Xen and the
>>> toolstack, not by qemu.  The qemu state is sent as the very last thing,
>>> after all of the memory, and therefore (you are arguing) that qemu is
>>> not started, and the files cannot be opened, until after the migration
>>> is nearly complete, and certainly until after the file is closed on the
>>> sending side.
>>
>> That would be quite dangerous.  Files aren't closed until after QEMU
>> exits; at this point whatever problem you have launching QEMU on the
>> destination would be unrecoverable.
> 
> But if I understand your concern correctly, you were concerned about
> the following scenario:
> R1. Receiver qemu opens file
> R2. Something causes receiver kernel to cache parts of file (maybe
> optimistic read-ahead)

For some image formats, metadata is cached inside QEMU on startup.
There is a callback to invalidate QEMU's cache at the end of migration,
but that does not extend to the page cache.

> S1. Sender qemu writes to file
> S2. Sender qemu does final flush
> S3. Sender qemu closes file
> R3. Receiver reads stale blocks from cache
> 
> Even supposing that Xen doesn't actually shut down qemu until it is
> started on the remote side, as long as the file isn't opened by qemu
> until after S2, we should be safe, right?  It would look like this:
> 
> S1. Sender qemu writes to file
> S2. Sender qemu does final flush
> R1. Receiver qemu opens file
> R2. Receiver kernel caches file
> S3. Sender qemu closes file
> 
> This is all assuming that:
> 1. The barrier operations / write flush are effective at getting the
> data back on to the NFS server
> 2. The receiver qemu doesn't open the file until after the last flush
> by the sender.
> 
> Number 1 has been tested by Alex I believe, and is mentioned in the
> changeset log; so if #2 is true, then we should be safe.  I'll try to
> verify that today.

Thanks.

>> Even for successful migration, it would also be bad for downtime (QEMU
>> isn't exactly lightning-fast to start).  And even if failure weren't
>> catastrophic, it would be a pity to transfer a few gigs of memory and
>> then find out that QEMU isn't present in the destination. :)
> 
> Well, if qemu isn't present at the destination, that's definitely user
> error. :-)  In any case, I know that he migrate can resume if it
> fails, so I suspect that the qemu is just paused on the sending side
> until the migration is known to complete.  As long as the last write
> was flushed to the NFS server before the receiver opens the file, we
> should be safe.

Note that the close really must happen before the next open.  Otherwise
the file metadata might not be up-to-date on the destination, too.

Paolo

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