Re: [Qemu-devel] [virtio-dev] Re: [PATCH] qemu: Introduce VIRTIO_NET_F_STANDBY feature bit to virtio_net

[Cornelia Huck]

On Tue, 26 Jun 2018 18:38:51 +0300
"Michael S. Tsirkin" <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 26, 2018 at 05:17:32PM +0200, Cornelia Huck wrote:
> > On Tue, 26 Jun 2018 04:50:25 +0300
> > "Michael S. Tsirkin" <address@hidden> wrote:
> >   
> > > On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 10:54:09AM -0700, Samudrala, Sridhar wrote:  
> > > > > > > > Might not neccessarily be something wrong, but it's very 
> > > > > > > > limited to
> > > > > > > > prohibit the MAC of VF from changing when enslaved by failover. 
> > > > > > > >    
> > > > > > > You mean guest changing MAC? I'm not sure why we prohibit that.   
> > > > > > >  
> > > > > > I think Sridhar and Jiri might be better person to answer it. My
> > > > > > impression was that sync'ing the MAC address change between all 3
> > > > > > devices is challenging, as the failover driver uses MAC address to
> > > > > > match net_device internally.    
> > > > 
> > > > Yes. The MAC address is assigned by the hypervisor and it needs to 
> > > > manage the movement
> > > > of the MAC between the PF and VF.  Allowing the guest to change the MAC 
> > > > will require
> > > > synchronization between the hypervisor and the PF/VF drivers. Most of 
> > > > the VF drivers
> > > > don't allow changing guest MAC unless it is a trusted VF.    
> > > 
> > > OK but it's a policy thing. Maybe it's a trusted VF. Who knows?
> > > For example I can see host just
> > > failing VIRTIO_NET_CTRL_MAC_ADDR_SET if it wants to block it.
> > > I'm not sure why VIRTIO_NET_F_STANDBY has to block it in the guest.
> > >   
> > 
> > So, what I get from this is that QEMU needs to be able to control all
> > of standby, uuid, and mac to accommodate the different setups
> > (respectively have libvirt/management software set it up). Is the host
> > able to find out respectively define whether a VF is trusted?  
> 
> You do it with ip link I think but QEMU doesn't normally do this,
> it relies on libvirt to poke at host kernel and supply the info.
> 

Ok, that makes me conclude that we definitely need to involve the
libvirt folks before we proceed further with defining QEMU interfaces.