On Wed, Apr 09, 2025 at 09:58:13AM +0200, Peter Krempa via Devel wrote:
On Wed, Apr 09, 2025 at 09:39:02 +0200, Markus Armbruster via Devel
wrote:
> Hi Steve, I apologize for the slow response.
>
> Steve Sistare <steven.sistare(a)oracle.com> writes:
>
> > Using qom-list and qom-get to get all the nodes and property values in a
> > QOM tree can take multiple seconds because it requires 1000's of
individual
> > QOM requests. Some managers fetch the entire tree or a large subset
> > of it when starting a new VM, and this cost is a substantial fraction of
> > start up time.
>
> "Some managers"... could you name one?
libvirt is at ~500 qom-get calls during an average startup ...
> > To reduce this cost, consider QAPI calls that fetch more information in
> > each call:
> > * qom-list-get: given a path, return a list of properties and values.
> > * qom-list-getv: given a list of paths, return a list of properties and
> > values for each path.
> > * qom-tree-get: given a path, return all descendant nodes rooted at that
> > path, with properties and values for each.
>
> Libvirt developers, would you be interested in any of these?
YES!!!
Not neccessarily, see below... !!!!
The getter with value could SO MUCH optimize the startup sequence of a
VM where libvirt needs to probe CPU flags:
(note the 'id' field in libvirt's monitor is sequential)
buf={"execute":"qom-get","arguments":{"path":"/machine/unattached/device[0]","property":"realized"},"id":"libvirt-8"}
buf={"execute":"qom-get","arguments":{"path":"/machine/unattached/device[0]","property":"hotplugged"},"id":"libvirt-9"}
buf={"execute":"qom-get","arguments":{"path":"/machine/unattached/device[0]","property":"hotpluggable"},"id":"libvirt-10"}
[...]
buf={"execute":"qom-get","arguments":{"path":"/machine/unattached/device[0]","property":"hv-apicv"},"id":"libvirt-470"}
buf={"execute":"qom-get","arguments":{"path":"/machine/unattached/device[0]","property":"xd"},"id":"libvirt-471"}
buf={"execute":"qom-get","arguments":{"path":"/machine/unattached/device[0]","property":"sse4_1"},"id":"libvirt-472"}
buf={"execute":"qom-get","arguments":{"path":"/machine/unattached/device[0]","property":"unavailable-features"},"id":"libvirt-473"}
First and last line's timestamps:
2025-04-08 14:44:28.882+0000: 1481190: info : qemuMonitorIOWrite:340 :
QEMU_MONITOR_IO_WRITE: mon=0x7f4678048360
buf={"execute":"qom-get","arguments":{"path":"/machine/unattached/device[0]","property":"realized"},"id":"libvirt-8"}
2025-04-08 14:44:29.149+0000: 1481190: info : qemuMonitorIOWrite:340 :
QEMU_MONITOR_IO_WRITE: mon=0x7f4678048360
buf={"execute":"qom-get","arguments":{"path":"/machine/unattached/device[0]","property":"unavailable-features"},"id":"libvirt-473"}
Libvirt spent ~170 ms probing cpu flags.
One thing I would point out is that qom-get can be considered an
"escape hatch" to get information when no better QMP command exists.
In this case, libvirt has made the assumption that every CPU feature
is a QOM property.
Adding qom-list-get doesn't appreciably change that, just makes the
usage more efficient.
Considering the bigger picture QMP design, when libvirt is trying to
understand QEMU's CPU feature flag expansion, I would ask why we don't
have something like a "query-cpu" command to tell us the current CPU
expansion, avoiding the need for poking at QOM properties directly.
With regards,
Daniel
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