@@ -17,12 +17,15 @@ The protocol defines 2 sides of the communication, master and slave. Master is
the application that shares its virtqueues, in our case QEMU. Slave is the
consumer of the virtqueues.
-In the current implementation QEMU is the Master, and the Slave is intended to
+In the traditional implementation QEMU is the master, and the slave is intended to
be a software Ethernet switch running in user space, such as Snabbswitch.
Master and slave can be either a client (i.e. connecting) or server (listening)
in the socket communication.
+The current vhost-user protocol is extended to support the vhost-pci based inter-VM
+communication. In this case, both the slave and master are QEMU instances.
+
Message Specification
---------------------
@@ -36,7 +39,7 @@ consists of 3 header fields and a payload:
* Request: 32-bit type of the request
* Flags: 32-bit bit field:
- Lower 2 bits are the version (currently 0x01)
- - Bit 2 is the reply flag - needs to be sent on each reply from the slave
+ - Bit 2 is the reply flag - needs to be sent on each reply
- Bit 3 is the need_reply flag - see VHOST_USER_PROTOCOL_F_REPLY_ACK for
details.
* Size - 32-bit size of the payload
@@ -119,9 +122,9 @@ The protocol for vhost-user is based on the existing implementation of vhost
for the Linux Kernel. Most messages that can be sent via the Unix domain socket
implementing vhost-user have an equivalent ioctl to the kernel implementation.
-The communication consists of master sending message requests and slave sending
-message replies. Most of the requests don't require replies. Here is a list of
-the ones that do:
+Traditionally, the communication consists of master sending message requests and
+slave sending message replies. Most of the requests don't require replies. Here
+is a list of the ones that do:
* VHOST_USER_GET_FEATURES
* VHOST_USER_GET_PROTOCOL_FEATURES
@@ -130,6 +133,10 @@ the ones that do:
[ Also see the section on REPLY_ACK protocol extension. ]
+Currently, the communication also supports the slave actively sending messages
+to the master. Here is a list of them:
+ * VHOST_USER_SET_FEATURES
+
There are several messages that the master sends with file descriptors passed
in the ancillary data:
@@ -259,6 +266,7 @@ Protocol features
#define VHOST_USER_PROTOCOL_F_LOG_SHMFD 1
#define VHOST_USER_PROTOCOL_F_RARP 2
#define VHOST_USER_PROTOCOL_F_REPLY_ACK 3
+#define VHOST_USER_PROTOCOL_F_VHOST_PCI 4
Message types
-------------
@@ -279,6 +287,7 @@ Message types
Id: 2
Ioctl: VHOST_SET_FEATURES
Master payload: u64
+ Slave payload: u64
Enable features in the underlying vhost implementation using a bitmask.
Feature bit VHOST_USER_F_PROTOCOL_FEATURES signals slave support for
The protocol feature, VHOST_USER_PROTOCOL_F_VHOST_PCI, indicates the support of vhost-pci. With the vhost-pci extension, the slave may actively sending meesages to the master. VHOST_USER_SET_FEATURES is one of the examples. To understand this example, let's first understand how the device feature bits are negotiated between the slave device/driver and the master device/driver: 1) the master device (e.g. virtio-net) GET_FEATURES from the slave (assume the feature bits are "f1"); 2) the master device negotiates the feature bits with its driver (assume the device gets "f2" after the negotiation); 3) the master device SET_FEATURES("f2") to the slave; 4) the slave creates a slave device (e.g. vhost-pci-net) with "f2" and the slave device negotiates "f2" with its driver (assume the device gets "f3" after the negotiation); 5) the slave _actively_ SET_FEATURES("f3") to the master device; 6) if "f3" != "f2", the master device needs to perform a device reset and re-negotiate the feature bits with its driver using "f3". Signed-off-by: Wei Wang <wei.w.wang@intel.com> --- docs/specs/vhost-user.txt | 19 ++++++++++++++----- 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)