Re: [Xen-devel] Problem with PV disk and iSCSI

[Keir Fraser <Keir.Fraser@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/2/08 15:26, "Gary Grebus" <ggrebus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>> netback already does this kind of reference counting. It oughtn't to be hard
>> to check the page reference count in the blkback I/O completion handler and,
>> if non-zero, set up a callback for when the count does fall to zero. And
>> defer responding to the frontend until that time. Netback is even more
>> sophisticated in that it also sets a time out and if the page languishes for
>> too long with non-zero count, it's able to forcibly copy-and-release the
>> page. I don't think we need to go that far for blkback however.
> 
> In the failure I'm seeing, the skb could sit on a socket queue
> indefinitely.  The application reading the socket could be blocked for
> some other reason.  blkback can't defer responding to blkfront
> (completing the guest I/O).
> 
> I think blkback needs to assume that a completion with a non-zero page
> reference count means it needs to make a copy, or implement a timeout
> like netback.

Either way, most of the infrastructure you need should be there, and you can
crib from netback to work out how to use it.

 -- Keir



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