This patch proposes a flag to maintain disk activation status globally. It
mostly rewrites disk activation mgmt for QEMU, including COLO and QMP
command xen_save_devices_state.
Backgrounds
===========
We have two problems on disk activations, one resolved, one not.
Problem 1: disk activation recover (for switchover interruptions)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When migration is either cancelled or failed during switchover, especially
when after the disks are inactivated, QEMU needs to remember re-activate
the disks again before vm starts.
It used to be done separately in two paths: one in qmp_migrate_cancel(),
the other one in the failure path of migration_completion().
It used to be fixed in different commits, all over the places in QEMU. So
these are the relevant changes I saw, I'm not sure if it's complete list:
- In 2016, commit fe904ea824 ("migration: regain control of images when
migration fails to complete")
- In 2017, commit 1d2acc3162 ("migration: re-active images while migration
been canceled after inactive them")
- In 2023, commit 6dab4c93ec ("migration: Attempt disk reactivation in
more failure scenarios")
Now since we have a slightly better picture maybe we can unify the
reactivation in a single path.
One side benefit of doing so is, we can move the disk operation outside QMP
command "migrate_cancel". It's possible that in the future we may want to
make "migrate_cancel" be OOB-compatible, while that requires the command
doesn't need BQL in the first place. This will already do that and make
migrate_cancel command lightweight.
Problem 2: disk invalidation on top of invalidated disks
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is an unresolved bug for current QEMU. Link in "Resolves:" at the
end. It turns out besides the src switchover phase (problem 1 above), QEMU
also needs to remember block activation on destination.
Consider two continuous migration in a row, where the VM was always paused.
In that scenario, the disks are not activated even until migration
completed in the 1st round. When the 2nd round starts, if QEMU doesn't
know the status of the disks, it needs to try inactivate the disk again.
Here the issue is the block layer API bdrv_inactivate_all() will crash a
QEMU if invoked on already inactive disks for the 2nd migration. For
detail, see the bug link at the end.
Implementation
==============
This patch proposes to maintain disk activation with a global flag, so we
know:
- If we used to inactivate disks for migration, but migration got
cancelled, or failed, QEMU will know it should reactivate the disks.
- On incoming side, if the disks are never activated but then another
migration is triggered, QEMU should be able to tell that inactivate is
not needed for the 2nd migration.
We used to have disk_inactive, but it only solves the 1st issue, not the
2nd. Also, it's done in completely separate paths so it's extremely hard
to follow either how the flag changes, or the duration that the flag is
valid, and when we will reactivate the disks.
Convert the existing disk_inactive flag into that global flag (also invert
its naming), and maintain the disk activation status for the whole
lifecycle of qemu. That includes the incoming QEMU.
Put both of the error cases of source migration (failure, cancelled)
together into migration_iteration_finish(), which will be invoked for
either of the scenario. So from that part QEMU should behave the same as
before. However with such global maintenance on disk activation status, we
not only cleanup quite a few temporary paths that we try to maintain the
disk activation status (e.g. in postcopy code), meanwhile it fixes the
crash for problem 2 in one shot.
For freshly started QEMU, the flag is initialized to TRUE showing that the
QEMU owns the disks by default.
For incoming migrated QEMU, the flag will be initialized to FALSE once and
for all showing that the dest QEMU doesn't own the disks until switchover.
That is guaranteed by the "once" variable.
Resolves: https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/2395
Signed-off-by: Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Fabiano Rosas <farosas@suse.de>
Message-Id: <20241206230838.1111496-7-peterx@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Fabiano Rosas <farosas@suse.de>
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