Re: [RFC] virtio_pmem: enable live migration support

[David Hildenbrand]

>>
>> I mean, that would be fundamentally broken, because the fsync() would
>> corrupt the file. So I assume in a sane environment, the dst could only
>> have stale clean pagecache pages. And we'd have to get rid of these to
>> re-read everything from file.
> 
> In case of write back cache mode, we could still have stale dirty
> pages at the destination
> host and destination fsync is not the right thing to do. We need to
> invalidate these pages
> (Can we invalidate dirty pages resident in page cache with
> POSIX_FADV_DONTNEED as
> well?) man pages say, we cannot (unless i misunderstood it).
> 

I think you'd have to fsync + POSIX_FADV_DONTNEED. But I am still
confused how we could end up with dirty pagecache pages on the
destination. In my opinion, there should only be clean pagecache pages
-- can someone enlighten me? :)

>>
>> IIRC, an existing mmap of the file on the dst should not really be
>> problematic *as long as* we didn't actually access file content that way
>> and faulted in the pages. So *maybe*, if we do the POSIX_FADV_DONTNEED
>> on the dst before accessing file content via the mmap, there shouldn't
>> be an issue. Unless the mmap itself is already problematic.
> 
> mmap with shared=ON, might result in stale dirty page cache pages?

But only if actually accessing memory, especially writing to it, no?

> 
>>
>> I think we can assume that once QEMU starts on the dst and wants to mmap
>> the file that it's not mapped into any other process yet. vhost-user
>> will only mmap *after* being told from QEMU about the mmap region and
>> the location in GPA.
> 
> maybe we have an old stale dirty page cache page even if there no mmap process
> alive before mmaping virtio-pmem backend file in destination?

But how could that happen in a sane environment? As I said, any
writeback on that file from the destination would actually corrupt the
file that has been used+modified on the source in the meantime, no?


-- 
Thanks,

David / dhildenb