Re: [Qemu-devel] virtio: Question on VRING_DESC_F_WRITE flag

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 07:16:13PM +0000, Subhashini Venkataraman wrote:
> I have a question on VRING_DESC_F_WRITE flag.  As per the specifications, if 
> this flag is set, then the corresponding buffer pointed by the descriptor is 
> Write only, otherwise Read Only.  I am trying to understand why there is no 
> READ_AND_WRITE option, i.e. a buffer could be Read by device emulation and 
> written back into.

All virtio devices are designed so that descriptors are read-only or
write-only.  A typical request looks like this:

 [header (RO)][data (RO)][status (WO)]

or

 [header (RO)][data (WO)][status (WO)]

Not sure what the original requirement for this design was, but the
read-only/write-only approach means that buffers could be sent over a
transport (like a pipe or TCP socket).  If a buffer was read-write then
it would be involve sending back a modified copy, which is unnecessary.

Stefan

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