Virtualization - Oct 2009 - [PATCHv2] virtio: order used ring after used index read

On SMP guests, reads from the ring might bypass
used index reads. This causes guest crashes
because host writes to used index to signal ring data
readiness.
Fix this by inserting rmb before used ring reads.

Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst at redhat.com>
---

Change from v1: indent with TAB and not spaces. sorry about the noise.

Rusty, I see guest crashes with virtio net on vhost sometimes,
and the following seems to help.
This seems an obviously correct thing to do, anyway.
If you think so, too, can this be queued for 2.6.32 please?
Thanks,



 drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c |    3 +++
 1 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c b/drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c
index f536005..fbd2ecd 100644
--- a/drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c
+++ b/drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c
@@ -285,6 +285,9 @@ static void *vring_get_buf(struct virtqueue *_vq, unsigned
int *len)
 		return NULL;
 	}
 
+	/* Only get used array entries after they have been exposed by host. */
+	rmb();
+
 	i = vq->vring.used->ring[vq->last_used_idx%vq->vring.num].id;
 	*len = vq->vring.used->ring[vq->last_used_idx%vq->vring.num].len;
 
-- 
1.6.5.rc2

On Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:58:53 pm Michael S. Tsirkin
wrote:
> On SMP guests, reads from the ring might bypass
> used index reads. This causes guest crashes
> because host writes to used index to signal ring data
> readiness.
> Fix this by inserting rmb before used ring reads.
Thanks, good spotting.  Applied.

Rusty.