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-rw-r--r--hw/char/virtio-console.c21
1 files changed, 21 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/hw/char/virtio-console.c b/hw/char/virtio-console.c
index 4f0e03d3b7..d44c18c128 100644
--- a/hw/char/virtio-console.c
+++ b/hw/char/virtio-console.c
@@ -68,6 +68,27 @@ static ssize_t flush_buf(VirtIOSerialPort *port,
*/
if (ret < 0)
ret = 0;
+
+ /* XXX we should be queuing data to send later for the
+ * console devices too rather than silently dropping
+ * console data on EAGAIN. The Linux virtio-console
+ * hvc driver though does sends with spinlocks held,
+ * so if we enable throttling that'll stall the entire
+ * guest kernel, not merely the process writing to the
+ * console.
+ *
+ * While we could queue data for later write without
+ * enabling throttling, this would result in the guest
+ * being able to trigger arbitrary memory usage in QEMU
+ * buffering data for later writes.
+ *
+ * So fixing this problem likely requires fixing the
+ * Linux virtio-console hvc driver to not hold spinlocks
+ * while writing, and instead merely block the process
+ * that's writing. QEMU would then need some way to detect
+ * if the guest had the fixed driver too, before we can
+ * use throttling on host side.
+ */
if (!k->is_console) {
virtio_serial_throttle_port(port, true);
if (!vcon->watch) {