Re: mdevctl: A shoestring mediated device management and persistence utility

From: Christophe de Dinechin <cdupontd@redhat.com>
To: Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@redhat.com>
Cc: "kvm@vger.kernel.org" <kvm@vger.kernel.org>,
	"Libvirt Devel" <libvir-list@redhat.com>,
	"Kirti Wankhede" <kwankhede@nvidia.com>,
	"Erik Skultety" <eskultet@redhat.com>,
	"Pavel Hrdina" <phrdina@redhat.com>,
	"\"Daniel P. Berrangé\"" <berrange@redhat.com>,
	"Sylvain Bauza" <sbauza@redhat.com>,
	"Cornelia Huck" <cohuck@redhat.com>
Subject: Re: mdevctl: A shoestring mediated device management and persistence utility
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2019 18:17:53 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <0358F503-E2C7-42DC-8186-34D1DA31F6D7@redhat.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20190523172001.41f386d8@x1.home>

> On 24 May 2019, at 01:20, Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Currently mediated device management, much like SR-IOV VF management,
> is largely left as an exercise for the user.  This is an attempt to
> provide something and see where it goes.  I doubt we'll solve
> everyone's needs on the first pass, but maybe we'll solve enough and
> provide helpers for the rest.  Without further ado, I'll point to what
> I have so far:
> 
> https://github.com/awilliam/mdevctl

While it’s still early, what about :

	mdevctl create-mdev <parent-device> <mdev-type> [<mdev-uuid>]

where if the mdev-uuid is missing, you just run uuidgen within the script?

I sent a small PR in case you think it makes sense.

Thanks,
Christophe

> 
> This is inspired by driverctl, which is also a bash utility.  mdevctl
> uses udev and systemd to record and recreate mdev devices for
> persistence and provides a command line utility for querying, listing,
> starting, stopping, adding, and removing mdev devices.  Currently, for
> better or worse, it considers anything created to be persistent.  I can
> imagine a global configuration option that might disable this and
> perhaps an autostart flag per mdev device, such that mdevctl might
> simply "know" about some mdevs but not attempt to create them
> automatically.  Clearly command line usage help, man pages, and
> packaging are lacking as well, release early, release often, plus this
> is a discussion starter to see if perhaps this is sufficient to meet
> some needs.
> 
> Originally I thought about making a utility to manage both mdev and
> SR-IOV VFs all in one, but it seemed more natural to start here
> (besides, I couldn't think of a good name for the combined utility).
> If this seems useful, maybe I'll start on a vfctl for SR-IOV and we'll
> see whether they have enough synergy to become one.
> 
> It would be really useful if s390 folks could help me understand
> whether it's possible to glean all the information necessary to
> recreate a ccw or ap mdev device from sysfs.  I expect the file where
> we currently only store the mdev_type to evolve into something that
> includes more information to facilitate more complicated devices.  For
> now I make no claims to maintaining compatibility of recorded mdev
> devices, it will absolutely change, but I didn't want to get bogged
> down in making sure I don't accidentally source a root kit hidden in an
> mdev config file.
> 
> I'm also curious how or if libvirt or openstack might use this.  If
> nothing else, it makes libvirt hook scripts easier to write, especially
> if we add an option not to autostart mdevs, or if users don't mind
> persistent mdevs, maybe there's nothing more to do.
> 
> BTW, feel free to clean up by bash, I'm a brute force and ignorance
> shell coder ;)  Thanks,
> 
> Alex