Hi Everyone,
We want to add extra options to device xml to skip reattach of pci passthrough devices.
Following is xml format for pci passthrough devices added to domain as of now.
<hostdev mode='subsystem' type='pci' managed='yes'>
<source>
<address domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x1a'
function='0x7'/>
</source>
</hostdev>
When we pass managed=’yes’ flag through xml, libvirt takes responsibility of detaching
device on domain(guest VM) start and reattaching on domain shutdown. We observed some
issues where guest VM shutdown may take long time, blocked for reattach operation on pci
passthrough device. As domain lock is held during this time it also makes libvirt mostly
inactive as it blocks even basic operations like (virsh list). Reattaching of device to
host can block due to reasons like buggy driver or initialization of device itself can
take long time in some cases.
We want to pass following extra options to resolve this:
1. skipReAttach (optional flag)
In some cases we do not need to reattach device to host as it may be reserved only for
guests, with this flag we can skip reattach operation on host. We do not want to modify
managed flag to avoid regression, so thinking of adding new optional flag.
1. reAttachDriverName (optional flag)
Name of driver to which we want to attach instead of default, to avoid reattaching to
buggy driver. Currently libvirt asks host to auto selects driver for device.
Yes we can use managed=’no’ but in that case user has to take responsibility of detaching
device before starting domain which we do not want. Please let us know your views on
this.
Thanks
Manish Mishra