[vbox-dev] Pursuing virtio block driver project

[Michael Thayer]

Hello Subodh,

(Is that the right way to address you?)

On 18.11.2015 04:40, Subodh Asthana wrote:
> Hi,
>
> We are students studying at Carnegie Mellon University, as part of our
> course project for Operating System Practicum
> <https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~412/> we wanted to pursue writing virtio block
> driver support for VirtualBox. We found the below thread in the
> developer community (forum) which indicates that virtio block support
> has not been done yet.
>
> https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=30869&sid=79168a99014f0c7921f9caa10e898a17&start=15
>
> We checked in the latest source code and found a file VirtioBlk.c in the
> path src/VBox/Devices/EFI/Firmware/OvmfPkg, which seems to implement EFI
> BLOCK IO PROTOCOL. Also, there is file VirtioNet.c (in same path) which
> seems to implement EFI SIMPLE NETWORK PROTOCOL.
>
> There is support for backend virtio network driver but no support for
> backend virtio block driver. We are curious as to why there is still no
> support for backend virtio block drivers? Is there is any specific
> reason for the same?

So far we only have support for virtio-net, and that only for a pre-1.0 
version of the standard.  The relevant files are:

src/VBox/Devices/PC/ipxe/src/drivers/net/virtio-net.c
src/VBox/Devices/PC/ipxe/src/drivers/net/virtio-net.h
src/VBox/Devices/PC/ipxe/src/drivers/bus/virtio-pci.c
src/VBox/Devices/PC/ipxe/src/drivers/bus/virtio-ring.c

The files under "bus" are the generic parts of virtio handling, but they 
are still very much oriented towards the virtio-net driver.  We haven't 
pursued virtio much because we didn't really feel a need to.  It might 
bring us some benefits, but so far we have always found other things to 
work on which we expected to bring more.

If you are interested in doing this then we would probably be happy to 
integrate it.  To save yourself pain you would probably want to keep us 
in the loop from an early point.  That way we can make sure that your 
code fits in with our coding style and that we like the general concept 
(usually keeping it as similar as possible to existing code is a good 
way to go).  We would also want evidence that the changes have been well 
tested, especially to catch possible regressions in other parts of the 
software.

Looking forward to seeing the results!

Regards,

Michael

>
> Thanks and Regards,
>
> Subodh Asthana
>
>
>
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-- 
ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG   Michael Thayer
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