summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/Documentation/filesystems/virtiofs.rst
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-08-30 09:22:00 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-08-30 09:22:00 -0700
commit034dd340b08be1f2f0477ad16131d609f9dbd53c (patch)
tree2536f4b2d7893ccd916b5abdf3c454ad6edc03c2 /Documentation/filesystems/virtiofs.rst
downloadlinux-stable-034dd340b08be1f2f0477ad16131d609f9dbd53c.tar.gz
linux-stable-034dd340b08be1f2f0477ad16131d609f9dbd53c.zip
Merge tag 'trace-v7.3-2' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/trace/linux-tracegrafted
Pull tracing fixes from Steven Rostedt: - Fix error output of boot instance creation failure Currently if a boot instance creation fails, instead of printing out the name of the instance that failed, it prints "(null)". That is because it prints "cur_str" that had already been processed by strsep(). Print the saved name instead. While at it, print the error code of the failure. - Fix use-after-free for same named historgrams Histograms can be named so that they can be used in multiple events. But if the named histogram has a variable attached, the second event that uses the named histogram which duplicates it and needs to free the original after duplication leaves the old variable in place and still visible. If another histogram uses than variable, it will use the stale one which will try to reference the freed duplicate histogram and crash the kernel. Free the duplicate variables along with the duplicated histogram data. - Check return value of kthread_run() in event self test The events self tests uses a kthread for testing but does not check if it succeeded in creating a kthread. If the kthread creation were to fail, the code will still try to call kthread_stop() on the error returned. - Fix race between reading trace_pipe and updating subbuffer size If a user is reading the trace_pipe file at the same time they update the ring buffer sub-buffer size, can cause the trace_pipe read to read stale data. Add trace_access_lock() around updating the ring buffer sub-buffer size. - Fix eventfs_inode on failure path in creation of the events directory In the creation of the "events" directory, if after allocating the eventfs_inode a failure is detected, it calls cleanup_ei() which calls free_ei(). The free_ei() will test if eventfs_inode being freed has no children. It is a bug if it does. But on the failure case of the creation of the "events" directory, the children lists have not yet been initialized and the free will trigger a warning because list_empty() on an uninitialized list returns false. Move the initialization into init_ei() where it makes more sense and makes sure that a created eventfs_inode has its lists initialized upon creation. - Check return value of kthread_run() in ftrace direct sample code The sample code that shows how to use the ftrace direct calls does not test the return of kthread_run() to see if it succeeds. Return a failure if the kthread_run() doesn't succeed. - Clear user events state on fork in case of alloc failure On fork, the child gets a pointer to the parent's user events state. It makes a copy of it then updates the child's pointer to it. But if the allocation fails, the duplication function leaves the child with a pointer to its parent's descriptor. When the child cleans up its data, it will free the parent's descriptor while the parent is still using it. In the duplication function, set the child's user_event_mm to NULL before testing if the allocation succeeded, and when it exits it will not free the parent's descriptor. - Fix retry exhaustion in simple ring buffer reader swap simple_ring_buffer_swap_reader_page() starts with retry set to 8 and post-decrements it only after a failed link replacement. On the final attempt, a successful replacement leaves retry at zero, while a failed replacement leaves it at -1. But the check for success expects the retry value to be non-zero and exits with an error on zero. This is the opposite result. Fix it. - Fail nicely when the remote swap_reader_page() returns an error Currently, if the swap_reader_page() of a remote buffer fails, it triggers a WARN_ON_ONCE() and continues normally. Instead, have it exit with an error and a pr_warn() print instead of a full WARNING. * tag 'trace-v7.3-2' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/trace/linux-trace: ring-buffer: Stop remote reader update when page swap fails tracing: Fix retry exhaustion in simple ring buffer reader swap tracing/user_events: Clear copied tracing state before fork duplication samples/ftrace: Fix kthread_stop() on ERR_PTR in ftrace-direct-multi-modify samples/ftrace: Fix kthread_stop() on ERR_PTR in ftrace-direct-modify eventfs: Initialize ei->children and ei->list in init_ei() tracing: Fix use-after-free in trace_pipe read on sub-buffer order change tracing: Fix crash passing ERR_PTR to kthread_stop() tracing: Fix use-after-free with same-name named triggers tracing: Fix logged instance name on creation failure
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/filesystems/virtiofs.rst')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/filesystems/virtiofs.rst76
1 files changed, 76 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/virtiofs.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/virtiofs.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..fd4d2484e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/virtiofs.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,76 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+.. _virtiofs_index:
+
+===================================================
+virtiofs: virtio-fs host<->guest shared file system
+===================================================
+
+- Copyright (C) 2019 Red Hat, Inc.
+
+Introduction
+============
+The virtiofs file system for Linux implements a driver for the paravirtualized
+VIRTIO "virtio-fs" device for guest<->host file system sharing. It allows a
+guest to mount a directory that has been exported on the host.
+
+Guests often require access to files residing on the host or remote systems.
+Use cases include making files available to new guests during installation,
+booting from a root file system located on the host, persistent storage for
+stateless or ephemeral guests, and sharing a directory between guests.
+
+Although it is possible to use existing network file systems for some of these
+tasks, they require configuration steps that are hard to automate and they
+expose the storage network to the guest. The virtio-fs device was designed to
+solve these problems by providing file system access without networking.
+
+Furthermore the virtio-fs device takes advantage of the co-location of the
+guest and host to increase performance and provide semantics that are not
+possible with network file systems.
+
+Usage
+=====
+Mount file system with tag ``myfs`` on ``/mnt``:
+
+.. code-block:: sh
+
+ guest# mount -t virtiofs myfs /mnt
+
+Please see https://virtio-fs.gitlab.io/ for details on how to configure QEMU
+and the virtiofsd daemon.
+
+Mount options
+-------------
+
+virtiofs supports general VFS mount options, for example, remount,
+ro, rw, context, etc. It also supports FUSE mount options.
+
+atime behavior
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+The atime-related mount options, for example, noatime, strictatime,
+are ignored. The atime behavior for virtiofs is the same as the
+underlying filesystem of the directory that has been exported
+on the host.
+
+Internals
+=========
+Since the virtio-fs device uses the FUSE protocol for file system requests, the
+virtiofs file system for Linux is integrated closely with the FUSE file system
+client. The guest acts as the FUSE client while the host acts as the FUSE
+server. The /dev/fuse interface between the kernel and userspace is replaced
+with the virtio-fs device interface.
+
+FUSE requests are placed into a virtqueue and processed by the host. The
+response portion of the buffer is filled in by the host and the guest handles
+the request completion.
+
+Mapping /dev/fuse to virtqueues requires solving differences in semantics
+between /dev/fuse and virtqueues. Each time the /dev/fuse device is read, the
+FUSE client may choose which request to transfer, making it possible to
+prioritize certain requests over others. Virtqueues have queue semantics and
+it is not possible to change the order of requests that have been enqueued.
+This is especially important if the virtqueue becomes full since it is then
+impossible to add high priority requests. In order to address this difference,
+the virtio-fs device uses a "hiprio" virtqueue specifically for requests that
+have priority over normal requests.