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Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC 10/10] nvdimm/e820: add multiple namespaces support
To:     Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Cc:     Joao Martins <joao.m.martins@oracle.com>,
        linux-nvdimm <linux-nvdimm@lists.01.org>,
        Vishal Verma <vishal.l.verma@intel.com>,
        Dave Jiang <dave.jiang@intel.com>,
        Ira Weiny <ira.weiny@intel.com>,
        Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@redhat.com>,
        Cornelia Huck <cohuck@redhat.com>,
        KVM list <kvm@vger.kernel.org>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Linux MM <linux-mm@kvack.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>, Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
        "H . Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>, X86 ML <x86@kernel.org>,
        Liran Alon <liran.alon@oracle.com>,
        Nikita Leshenko <nikita.leshchenko@oracle.com>,
        Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@oracle.com>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>,
        Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>
References: <20200110190313.17144-1-joao.m.martins@oracle.com>
 <20200110190313.17144-11-joao.m.martins@oracle.com>
 <e605fed8-46f5-6a07-11e6-2cc079a1159b@google.com>
 <CAPcyv4iiSsEOsfEwLQcV3bNDjBSxw1OgWoBdEWPQEymq6=xm-A@mail.gmail.com>
From:   Barret Rhoden <brho@google.com>
Message-ID: <ae788015-616f-96e6-3a0e-39c1911c4b01@google.com>
Date:   Tue, 4 Feb 2020 13:20:21 -0500
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Hi -

On 2/4/20 11:44 AM, Dan Williams wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 4, 2020 at 7:30 AM Barret Rhoden <brho@google.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi -
>>
>> On 1/10/20 2:03 PM, Joao Martins wrote:
>>> User can define regions with 'memmap=size!offset' which in turn
>>> creates PMEM legacy devices. But because it is a label-less
>>> NVDIMM device we only have one namespace for the whole device.
>>>
>>> Add support for multiple namespaces by adding ndctl control
>>> support, and exposing a minimal set of features:
>>> (ND_CMD_GET_CONFIG_SIZE, ND_CMD_GET_CONFIG_DATA,
>>> ND_CMD_SET_CONFIG_DATA) alongside NDD_ALIASING because we can
>>> store labels.
>>
>> FWIW, I like this a lot.  If we move away from using memmap in favor of
>> efi_fake_mem, ideally we'd have the same support for full-fledged
>> pmem/dax regions and namespaces that this patch brings.
> 
> No, efi_fake_mem only supports creating dax-regions. What's the use
> case that can't be satisfied by just specifying multiple memmap=
> ranges?

I'd like to be able to create and destroy dax regions on the fly.  In 
particular, I want to run guest VMs using the dax files for guest 
memory, but I don't know at boot time how many VMs I'll have, or what 
their sizes are.  Ideally, I'd have separate files for each VM, instead 
of a single /dev/dax.

I currently do this with fs-dax with one big memmap region (ext4 on 
/dev/pmem0), and I use the file system to handle the 
creation/destruction/resizing and metadata management.  But since fs-dax 
won't work with device pass-through, I started looking at dev-dax, with 
the expectation that I'd need some software to manage the memory (i.e. 
allocation).  That led me to ndctl, which seems to need namespace labels 
to have the level of control I was looking for.

Thanks,

Barret