RE: VFIO/vfio-user: specify NVMe namespace to boot from

[Thanos Makatos]

> On Mon, Jul 12, 2021 at 01:24:07PM +0000, Thanos Makatos wrote:
> > We're working on implementing a virtual NVMe controller based on SPDK
> and a multiprocess-qemu branch that uses the vfio-user. We're facing a
> problem where the existing API doesn't allow us to tell QEMU from which
> NVMe namespace we'd like SeaBIOS to boot from.
> >
> > How can we solve this problem? Can we add a parameter to the '-boot'
> option, e.g. '-boot path=/devices/pciblah/...@namespace0'? AFAIK VFIO
> should have the same problem.
> >
> > The corresponding SeaBIOS patch can be found in
> https://mail.coreboot.org/hyperkitty/list/seabios@seabios.org/thread/2Q7
> NPH7TJNHK6JGPHQL7755HILO23ISN/
> 
> Hi,
> I have CCed Gerd Hoffmann on a hunch that he may have ideas.
> 
> Yes, I think the path needs to include the Namespace ID similar to how
> SCSI boot paths include the target/channel/LUN.

Just to make sure I've explained the problem correctly, what we need to fix is 
not specific to NVMe: we want to be able to boot from any PCI device, so we'd 
need something like '-boot /devices/pciblah'. Specifically, for NVMe we might 
want to specify the namespace (as we can't necessarily assume that the first 
one must be used), therefore we'd have to add the '/namespace0' bit. For other 
kinds of PCI devices, we'd have to append something different.

Would such a change be acceptable?

> 
> When the SeaBIOS NVMe driver probes the controller is should discover
> the available Namespaces and set up individual drives for each
> Namespace. That would be analogous to virtio_scsi_add_lun().

Setting up an individual drive can easily exhaust SeaBIOS's limited memory, so 
it's better to either probe the specified namespace or probe the first active 
one. I've sent a patch here: 
https://mail.coreboot.org/hyperkitty/list/seabios@seabios.org/message/TKKUCH5PYZPXZG3NA2F5SALUFUVUYDZG/