[libvirt PATCH] qemu: allow passt to self-daemonize

[Michal Prívozník]

On 2/9/23 10:56, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 09, 2023 at 09:52:00AM +0100, Michal Prívozník wrote:
>> On 2/9/23 00:13, Laine Stump wrote:
>>> I initially had the passt process being started in an identical
>>> fashion to the slirp-helper - libvirt was daemonizing the new process
>>> and recording its pid in a pidfile. The problem with this is that,
>>> since it is daemonized immediately, any startup error in passt happens
>>> after the daemonization, and thus isn't seen by libvirt - libvirt
>>> believes that the process has started successfully and continues on
>>> its merry way. The result was that sometimes a guest would be started,
>>> but there would be no passt process for qemu to use for network
>>> traffic.
>>>
>>> Instead, we should be starting passt in the same manner we start
>>> dnsmasq - we just exec it as normal (along with a request that passt
>>> create the pidfile, which is just another option on the passt
>>> commandline) and wait for the child process to exit; passt then has a
>>> chance to parse its commandline and complete all the setup prior to
>>> daemonizing itself; if it encounters an error and exits with a non-0
>>> code, libvirt will see the code and know about the failure. We can
>>> then grab the output from stderr, log that so the "user" has some idea
>>> of what went wrong, and then fail the guest startup.
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Laine Stump <laine at redhat.com>
>>> ---
>>>  src/qemu/qemu_passt.c | 9 ++++-----
>>>  1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
>>>
>>> diff --git a/src/qemu/qemu_passt.c b/src/qemu/qemu_passt.c
>>> index 0f09bf3db8..f640a69c00 100644
>>> --- a/src/qemu/qemu_passt.c
>>> +++ b/src/qemu/qemu_passt.c
>>> @@ -141,24 +141,23 @@ qemuPasstStart(virDomainObj *vm,
>>>      g_autofree char *passtSocketName = qemuPasstCreateSocketPath(vm, net);
>>>      g_autoptr(virCommand) cmd = NULL;
>>>      g_autofree char *pidfile = qemuPasstCreatePidFilename(vm, net);
>>> +    g_autofree char *errbuf = NULL;
>>>      char macaddr[VIR_MAC_STRING_BUFLEN];
>>>      size_t i;
>>>      pid_t pid = (pid_t) -1;
>>>      int exitstatus = 0;
>>>      int cmdret = 0;
>>> -    VIR_AUTOCLOSE errfd = -1;
>>>  
>>>      cmd = virCommandNew(PASST);
>>>  
>>>      virCommandClearCaps(cmd);
>>> -    virCommandSetPidFile(cmd, pidfile);
>>> -    virCommandSetErrorFD(cmd, &errfd);
>>> -    virCommandDaemonize(cmd);
>>> +    virCommandSetErrorBuffer(cmd, &errbuf);
>>>  
>>>      virCommandAddArgList(cmd,
>>>                           "--one-off",
>>>                           "--socket", passtSocketName,
>>>                           "--mac-addr", virMacAddrFormat(&net->mac, macaddr),
>>> +                         "--pid", pidfile,
>>
>> The only problem with this approach is that our virPidFile*() functions
>> rely on locking the very first byte. And when reading the pidfile, we
>> try to lock the file and if we succeeded it means the file wasn't locked
>> which means the process holding the lock died and thus the pid in the
>> pidfile is stale.
>>
>> Now, I don't see passt locking the pidfile at all. So effectively, after
>> this patch qemuPasstStop() would do nothing (well, okay, it'll remove
>> the pidfile), qemuPasstSetupCgroup() does nothing, etc.
>>
>> What we usually do in this case, is: we let our code write the pidfile
>> (just like the current code does), but then have a loop that waits a bit
>> for socket to show up. If it doesn't in say 5 seconds we kill the child
>> process (which we know the PID of). You can take inspiration from:
>> qemuDBusStart() or qemuProcessStartManagedPRDaemon().
> 
> Busy waiting for sockets is nasty though. Depending on how passt is
> written it might not be needed. If passt creates the listen()
> socket and does all the important initialization steps that are liable
> to fail, *before* it daemonizes, then we can synchronize without busy
> waiting. ie waitpid() for passt leader process to exit. Then check if
> the socket exists. If it does, then passt has daemonized and is listening
> and running, if it does not, then passt failed.

That still requires passt to hold the pidfile open and locked, neither
of which is happening with the current code.

Michal