vsock support in osv

zhiting zhu

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Nov 4, 2019, 6:13:32 PM11/4/19

to OSv Development

Hey,

Does osv support vsock?

Best,

Zhiting

Asias He

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Nov 4, 2019, 6:37:20 PM11/4/19

to zhiting zhu, Osv Dev

No, I do not think it is supposed yet.

Waldek Kozaczuk

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Nov 5, 2019, 2:29:29 PM11/5/19

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Asias,

I saw somewhere that you are one of the original authors of vsock so you may have first-hand suggestions. Isn't vsock (called socket device in virtio spec - https://docs.oasis-open.org/virtio/virtio/v1.1/csprd01/virtio-v1.1-csprd01.html#x1-39000010) quite similar to virtio-net device (same rx and tx vqueues plus event one). Would it make sense to use/re-use virtio-net code in OSv as a basic for vsock device?

Also as I understand vsock allows for guest-host communication. But what are the practical examples when this is useful? Configuration management? Would it be somewhat similar to what cloud init provides, no?

Waldek

Asias He

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Nov 6, 2019, 9:49:27 AM11/6/19

to Waldek Kozaczuk, OSv Development

On Wed, Nov 6, 2019 at 3:29 AM Waldek Kozaczuk <jwkoz...@gmail.com> wrote:

Asias,

I saw somewhere that you are one of the original authors of vsock so you may have first-hand suggestions. Isn't vsock (called socket device in virtio spec - https://docs.oasis-open.org/virtio/virtio/v1.1/csprd01/virtio-v1.1-csprd01.html#x1-39000010) quite similar to virtio-net device (same rx and tx vqueues plus event one). Would it make sense to use/re-use virtio-net code in OSv as a basic for vsock device?

Yes, I worked on vsock in the past. It is similar to virtio-net in the sense it uses the virt-queues, but it is not an ethernet device. It is a socket (both stream and datagram) level transport. We can reuse the virtio infrastructure in osv but other than that it makes little sense to reuse the virtio-net code.

Also as I understand vsock allows for guest-host communication. But what are the practical examples when this is useful? Configuration management? Would it be somewhat similar to what cloud init provides, no?

It allows guest-host and guest-host communication. It is zero config so that the guest does not need to do the ip address configuration. It can be used to replace the virtio-serial device for management. It can also be used as a guest-host file sharing using nfs on top of vsock.

The nice thing about vsock is that it is easy to use from the application point of view. Any tcp/udp socket programs can be easily modified to run on top of vsock. Change the protocol number and recompile. That's it.

Waldek

On Monday, November 4, 2019 at 6:37:20 PM UTC-5, Asias He wrote:
No, I do not think it is supposed yet.

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