kernel/linux.git/drivers/vhost/Kconfig, branch v6.19.11

vhost: Reintroduce kthread API and add mode selection

2025-08-01T13:11:09+00:00

Since commit 6e890c5d5021 ("vhost: use vhost_tasks for worker threads"), the vhost uses vhost_task and operates as a child of the owner thread. This is required for correct CPU usage accounting, especially when using containers. However, this change has caused confusion for some legacy userspace applications, and we didn't notice until it's too late. Unfortunately, it's too late to revert - we now have userspace depending both on old and new behaviour :( To address the issue, reintroduce kthread mode for vhost workers and provide a configuration to select between kthread and task worker. - Add 'fork_owner' parameter to vhost_dev to let users select kthread or task mode. Default mode is task mode(VHOST_FORK_OWNER_TASK). - Reintroduce kthread mode support: * Bring back the original vhost_worker() implementation, and renamed to vhost_run_work_kthread_list(). * Add cgroup support for the kthread * Introduce struct vhost_worker_ops: - Encapsulates create / stop / wake‑up callbacks. - vhost_worker_create() selects the proper ops according to inherit_owner. - Userspace configuration interface: * New IOCTLs: - VHOST_SET_FORK_FROM_OWNER lets userspace select task mode (VHOST_FORK_OWNER_TASK) or kthread mode (VHOST_FORK_OWNER_KTHREAD) - VHOST_GET_FORK_FROM_OWNER reads the current worker mode * Expose module parameter 'fork_from_owner_default' to allow system administrators to configure the default mode for vhost workers * Kconfig option CONFIG_VHOST_ENABLE_FORK_OWNER_CONTROL controls whether these IOCTLs and the parameter are available - The VHOST_NEW_WORKER functionality requires fork_owner to be set to true, with validation added to ensure proper configuration This partially reverts or improves upon: commit 6e890c5d5021 ("vhost: use vhost_tasks for worker threads") commit 1cdaafa1b8b4 ("vhost: replace single worker pointer with xarray") Fixes: 6e890c5d5021 ("vhost: use vhost_tasks for worker threads"), Signed-off-by: Cindy Lu Message-Id: <20250714071333.59794-2-lulu@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin Acked-by: Jason Wang Tested-by: Lei Yang

vhost-scsi: Dynamically allocate scatterlists

2025-02-25T12:10:46+00:00

We currently preallocate scatterlists which have 2048 entries for each command. For a small device with just 1 queue this results in: 8 MB = 32 bytes per sg * 2048 entries * 128 cmd When mq is turned on and we increase the virtqueue_size so we can handle commands from multiple queues in parallel, then this can sky rocket. This patch allows us to dynamically allocate the scatterlist like is done with drivers like NVMe and SCSI. For small IO (4-16K) IOPs testing, we didn't see any regressions, but for throughput testing we sometimes saw a 2-5% regression when the backend device was very fast (8 NVMe drives in a MD RAID0 config or a memory backed device). As a result this patch makes the dynamic allocation feature a modparam so userspace can decide how it wants to balance mem use and perf. Signed-off-by: Mike Christie Message-Id: <20241203191705.19431-6-michael.christie@oracle.com> Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin Acked-by: Stefan Hajnoczi

vhost_task: Allow vhost layer to use copy_process

2023-03-23T11:45:36+00:00

Qemu will create vhost devices in the kernel which perform network, SCSI, etc IO and management operations from worker threads created by the kthread API. Because the kthread API does a copy_process on the kthreadd thread, the vhost layer has to use kthread_use_mm to access the Qemu thread's memory and cgroup_attach_task_all to add itself to the Qemu thread's cgroups, and it bypasses the RLIMIT_NPROC limit which can result in VMs creating more threads than the admin expected. This patch adds a new struct vhost_task which can be used instead of kthreads. They allow the vhost layer to use copy_process and inherit the userspace process's mm and cgroups, the task is accounted for under the userspace's nproc count and can be seen in its process tree, and other features like namespaces work and are inherited by default. Signed-off-by: Mike Christie Acked-by: Michael S. Tsirkin Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner (Microsoft) Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

vhost_vdpa: implement IRQ offloading in vhost_vdpa

2020-08-05T15:08:42+00:00

This patch introduce a set of functions for setup/unsetup and update irq offloading respectively by register/unregister and re-register the irq_bypass_producer. With these functions, this commit can setup/unsetup irq offloading through setting DRIVER_OK/!DRIVER_OK, and update irq offloading through SET_VRING_CALL. Signed-off-by: Zhu Lingshan Suggested-by: Jason Wang Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200731065533.4144-5-lingshan.zhu@intel.com Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin

treewide: replace '---help---' in Kconfig files with 'help'

2020-06-13T16:57:21+00:00

Since commit 84af7a6194e4 ("checkpatch: kconfig: prefer 'help' over '---help---'"), the number of '---help---' has been gradually decreasing, but there are still more than 2400 instances. This commit finishes the conversion. While I touched the lines, I also fixed the indentation. There are a variety of indentation styles found. a) 4 spaces + '---help---' b) 7 spaces + '---help---' c) 8 spaces + '---help---' d) 1 space + 1 tab + '---help---' e) 1 tab + '---help---' (correct indentation) f) 1 tab + 1 space + '---help---' g) 1 tab + 2 spaces + '---help---' In order to convert all of them to 1 tab + 'help', I ran the following commend: $ find . -name 'Kconfig*' | xargs sed -i 's/^[[:space:]]*---help---/\thelp/' Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada

vhost: revert "vhost: disable for OABI"

2020-06-02T06:45:13+00:00

This reverts commit d085eb8ce727 ("vhost: disable for OABI") With commit "virtio: force spec specified alignment on types" in place, we force proper alignment for all structures, so there's no longer a reason to blacklist OABI. Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin

vhost: disable for OABI

2020-04-20T14:19:22+00:00

vhost is currently broken on the some ARM configs. The reason is that the ring element addresses are passed between components with different alignments assumptions. Thus, if guest selects a pointer and host then gets and dereferences it, then alignment assumed by the host's compiler might be greater than the actual alignment of the pointer. compiler on the host from assuming pointer is aligned. This actually triggers on ARM with -mabi=apcs-gnu - which is a deprecated configuration. With this OABI, compiler assumes that all structures are 4 byte aligned - which is stronger than virtio guarantees for available and used rings, which are merely 2 bytes. Thus a guest without -mabi=apcs-gnu running on top of host with -mabi=apcs-gnu will be broken. The correct fix is to force alignment of structures - however that is an intrusive fix that's best deferred until the next release. We didn't previously support such ancient systems at all - this surfaced after vdpa support prompted removing dependency of vhost on VIRTULIZATION. So for now, let's just add something along the lines of depends on !ARM || AEABI to the virtio Kconfig declaration, and add a comment that it has to do with struct member alignment. Note: we can't make VHOST and VHOST_RING themselves have a dependency since these are selected. Add a new symbol for that. We should be able to drop this dependency down the road. Fixes: 20c384f1ea1a0bc7 ("vhost: refine vhost and vringh kconfig") Suggested-by: Ard Biesheuvel Suggested-by: Richard Earnshaw Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin

vdpa: make vhost, virtio depend on menu

2020-04-17T10:05:30+00:00

If user did not configure any vdpa drivers, neither vhost nor virtio vdpa are going to be useful. So there's no point in prompting for these and selecting vdpa core automatically. Simplify configuration by making virtio and vhost vdpa drivers depend on vdpa menu entry. Once done, we no longer need a separate menu entry, so also get rid of this. While at it, fix up the IFC entry: VDPA->vDPA for consistency with other places. Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin Acked-by: Jason Wang

virtio/test: fix up after IOTLB changes

2020-04-16T22:31:08+00:00

Allow building vringh without IOTLB (that's the case for userspace builds, will be useful for CAIF/VOD down the road too). Update for API tweaks. Don't include vringh with userspace builds. Cc: Jason Wang Cc: Eugenio Pérez Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin Acked-by: Jason Wang

vhost: introduce vDPA-based backend

2020-04-02T14:41:40+00:00

This patch introduces a vDPA-based vhost backend. This backend is built on top of the same interface defined in virtio-vDPA and provides a generic vhost interface for userspace to accelerate the virtio devices in guest. This backend is implemented as a vDPA device driver on top of the same ops used in virtio-vDPA. It will create char device entry named vhost-vdpa-$index for userspace to use. Userspace can use vhost ioctls on top of this char device to setup the backend. Vhost ioctls are extended to make it type agnostic and behave like a virtio device, this help to eliminate type specific API like what vhost_net/scsi/vsock did: - VHOST_VDPA_GET_DEVICE_ID: get the virtio device ID which is defined by virtio specification to differ from different type of devices - VHOST_VDPA_GET_VRING_NUM: get the maximum size of virtqueue supported by the vDPA device - VHSOT_VDPA_SET/GET_STATUS: set and get virtio status of vDPA device - VHOST_VDPA_SET/GET_CONFIG: access virtio config space - VHOST_VDPA_SET_VRING_ENABLE: enable a specific virtqueue For memory mapping, IOTLB API is mandated for vhost-vDPA which means userspace drivers are required to use VHOST_IOTLB_UPDATE/VHOST_IOTLB_INVALIDATE to add or remove mapping for a specific userspace memory region. The vhost-vDPA API is designed to be type agnostic, but it allows net device only in current stage. Due to the lacking of control virtqueue support, some features were filter out by vhost-vdpa. We will enable more features and devices in the near future. Signed-off-by: Tiwei Bie Signed-off-by: Eugenio Pérez Signed-off-by: Jason Wang Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200326140125.19794-8-jasowang@redhat.com Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin