docs/virtio-migration.txt

   1 Virtio devices and migration
   2 ============================
   3
   4 Copyright 2015 IBM Corp.
   5
   6 This work is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL, version 2 or later.  See
   7 the COPYING file in the top-level directory.
   8
   9 Saving and restoring the state of virtio devices is a bit of a twisty maze,
  10 for several reasons:
  11 - state is distributed between several parts:
  12   - virtio core, for common fields like features, number of queues, ...
  13   - virtio transport (pci, ccw, ...), for the different proxy devices and
  14     transport specific state (msix vectors, indicators, ...)
  15   - virtio device (net, blk, ...), for the different device types and their
  16     state (mac address, request queue, ...)
  17 - most fields are saved via the stream interface; subsequently, subsections
  18   have been added to make cross-version migration possible
  19
  20 This file attempts to document the current procedure and point out some
  21 caveats.
  22
  23
  24 Save state procedure
  25 ====================
  26
  27 virtio core               virtio transport          virtio device
  28 -----------               ----------------          -------------
  29
  30                                                     save() function registered
  31                                                     via VMState wrapper on
  32                                                     device class
  33 virtio_save()                                       <----------
  34              ------>      save_config()
  35                           - save proxy device
  36                           - save transport-specific
  37                             device fields
  38 - save common device
  39   fields
  40 - save common virtqueue
  41   fields
  42              ------>      save_queue()
  43                           - save transport-specific
  44                             virtqueue fields
  45              ------>                               save_device()
  46                                                    - save device-specific
  47                                                      fields
  48 - save subsections
  49   - device endianness,
  50     if changed from
  51     default endianness
  52   - 64 bit features, if
  53     any high feature bit
  54     is set
  55   - virtio-1 virtqueue
  56     fields, if VERSION_1
  57     is set
  58
  59
  60 Load state procedure
  61 ====================
  62
  63 virtio core               virtio transport          virtio device
  64 -----------               ----------------          -------------
  65
  66                                                     load() function registered
  67                                                     via VMState wrapper on
  68                                                     device class
  69 virtio_load()                                       <----------
  70              ------>      load_config()
  71                           - load proxy device
  72                           - load transport-specific
  73                             device fields
  74 - load common device
  75   fields
  76 - load common virtqueue
  77   fields
  78              ------>      load_queue()
  79                           - load transport-specific
  80                             virtqueue fields
  81 - notify guest
  82              ------>                               load_device()
  83                                                    - load device-specific
  84                                                      fields
  85 - load subsections
  86   - device endianness
  87   - 64 bit features
  88   - virtio-1 virtqueue
  89     fields
  90 - sanitize endianness
  91 - sanitize features
  92 - virtqueue index sanity
  93   check
  94                                                    - feature-dependent setup
  95
  96
  97 Implications of this setup
  98 ==========================
  99
 100 Devices need to be careful in their state processing during load: The
 101 load_device() procedure is invoked by the core before subsections have
 102 been loaded. Any code that depends on information transmitted in subsections
 103 therefore has to be invoked in the device's load() function _after_
 104 virtio_load() returned (like e.g. code depending on features).
 105
 106 Any extension of the state being migrated should be done in subsections
 107 added to the core for compatibility reasons. If transport or device specific
 108 state is added, core needs to invoke a callback from the new subsection.