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authorStefano Garzarella <sgarzare@redhat.com>2024-06-18 12:05:19 +0200
committerMichael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>2024-07-03 18:14:06 -0400
commit4e647fa08586a5ada74cf6d3ae1cdf3a027202cb (patch)
tree396296ac8c5ddfb099d088300a9a99d59a3f5b7c /docs
parent5ab04420c3de11ae4a573b08b53584a2a0c5dd00 (diff)
hostmem: add a new memory backend based on POSIX shm_open()
shm_open() creates and opens a new POSIX shared memory object. A POSIX shared memory object allows creating memory backend with an associated file descriptor that can be shared with external processes (e.g. vhost-user). The new `memory-backend-shm` can be used as an alternative when `memory-backend-memfd` is not available (Linux only), since shm_open() should be provided by any POSIX-compliant operating system. This backend mimics memfd, allocating memory that is practically anonymous. In theory shm_open() requires a name, but this is allocated for a short time interval and shm_unlink() is called right after shm_open(). After that, only fd is shared with external processes (e.g., vhost-user) as if it were associated with anonymous memory. In the future we may also allow the user to specify the name to be passed to shm_open(), but for now we keep the backend simple, mimicking anonymous memory such as memfd. Acked-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com> Acked-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com> Acked-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com> (QAPI schema) Signed-off-by: Stefano Garzarella <sgarzare@redhat.com> Message-Id: <20240618100519.145853-1-sgarzare@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'docs')
-rw-r--r--docs/system/devices/vhost-user.rst5
1 files changed, 3 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/docs/system/devices/vhost-user.rst b/docs/system/devices/vhost-user.rst
index 9b2da106ce..35259d8ec7 100644
--- a/docs/system/devices/vhost-user.rst
+++ b/docs/system/devices/vhost-user.rst
@@ -98,8 +98,9 @@ Shared memory object
In order for the daemon to access the VirtIO queues to process the
requests it needs access to the guest's address space. This is
-achieved via the ``memory-backend-file`` or ``memory-backend-memfd``
-objects. A reference to a file-descriptor which can access this object
+achieved via the ``memory-backend-file``, ``memory-backend-memfd``, or
+``memory-backend-shm`` objects.
+A reference to a file-descriptor which can access this object
will be passed via the socket as part of the protocol negotiation.
Currently the shared memory object needs to match the size of the main