[Libvir] Network blocking issue

Richard W.M. Jones rjones at redhat.com
Thu Sep 13 18:34:52 UTC 2007


Shuveb Hussain wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I observed this while using the python bindings and accessing a remote
> host with libvirt:
> 
>>>> import libvirt
>>>> c = libvirt.open('xen://veetee/')
>>>> c.getInfo()
> ['i686', 2021, 2, 1864, 1, 1, 2, 1]
>>>> c.getInfo()
> ['i686', 2021, 2, 1864, 1, 1, 2, 1]
> 
> # remove network cable from remote machine now
>>>> c.getInfo()
> # blocks forever....
> 
> What is the problem here and is there a solution to this? I am running
> FC7 and here is the version info from virsh:
> virsh # version
> Compiled against library: libvir 0.3.2
> Using library: libvir 0.3.2
> Using API: Xen 3.0.1
> Running hypervisor: Xen 3.1.0
> 
> I observed this for more than 10 mins, it was still hung.

This is simply a TCP issue, and nothing to do with libvirt or the remote 
protocol.

I repeated your experiment using a virsh shell and the nodeinfo command, 
which essentially does the same thing.  After yanking the network cable 
I observed that the sendto(2) syscall succeeded and the recvfrom(2) 
syscall failed:

sendto(4, 
"\27\3\1\1\20\246\325\207<\320\0230E<\352\4x\310E\1O*g\204!\254\n\234O
N\23\310"..., 277, 0, NULL, 0) = 277
recvfrom(4, [... strace hangs here ...]

On the wire I could see using tcpdump that TCP was repeatedly trying to 
send the request packet and getting no response:

19:25:17.108067 IP oirase.55065 > amd.16514: P 1474:1623(149) ack 1082 
win 107 <nop,nop,timestamp 703462318 117574265>
19:25:17.108360 IP oirase.55065 > amd.16514: P 1623:1900(277) ack 1082 
win 107 <nop,nop,timestamp 703462319 117574265>
19:25:17.308306 IP oirase.55065 > amd.16514: P 1474:1900(426) ack 1082 
win 107 <nop,nop,timestamp 703462519 117574265>
19:25:17.710212 IP oirase.55065 > amd.16514: P 1474:1900(426) ack 1082 
win 107 <nop,nop,timestamp 703462921 117574265>
19:25:18.514030 IP oirase.55065 > amd.16514: P 1474:1900(426) ack 1082 
win 107 <nop,nop,timestamp 703463725 117574265>
19:25:20.121667 IP oirase.55065 > amd.16514: P 1474:1900(426) ack 1082 
win 107 <nop,nop,timestamp 703465333 117574265>
19:25:23.336940 IP oirase.55065 > amd.16514: P 1474:1900(426) ack 1082 
win 107 <nop,nop,timestamp 703468549 117574265>
19:25:29.766483 IP oirase.55065 > amd.16514: P 1474:1900(426) ack 1082 
win 107 <nop,nop,timestamp 703474981 117574265>
19:25:42.625568 IP oirase.55065 > amd.16514: P 1474:1900(426) ack 1082 
win 107 <nop,nop,timestamp 703487845 117574265>
19:26:08.344739 IP oirase.55065 > amd.16514: P 1474:1900(426) ack 1082 
win 107 <nop,nop,timestamp 703513573 117574265>
19:32:42.572441 IP oirase.55065 > amd.16514: P 1474:1900(426) ack 1082 
win 107 <nop,nop,timestamp 703907941 117574265>
[etc]

On the broader issue, libvirt calls are synchronous -- this is done to 
reduce the complexity of the interface and implementation.  If you need 
them to be asychronous, use a separate thread (or process) to make the 
calls.

Rich.

-- 
Emerging Technologies, Red Hat - http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/
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