Bug 1024272

Summary:	Changing --hard-limit with memtune report invalid error when --swap-hard-limit is unlimited.
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7	Reporter:	Hao Liu <hliu>
Component:	libvirt	Assignee:	Martin Kletzander <mkletzan>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:	Virtualization Bugs <virt-bugs>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	7.0	CC:	acathrow, dallan, dyuan, hliu, jmiao, lsu, mzhan
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	7.0
Hardware:	x86_64
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	libvirt-1.1.1-15.el7	Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2014-06-13 12:05:29 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Hao Liu 2013-10-29 09:45:24 UTC

Description of problem:
Changing --hard-limit with memtune report invalid error when --swap-hard-limit is unlimited.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.0 Beta
libvirt-1.1.1-10.el7.x86_64

How reproducible:
always

Command:
1. Prepare a running vm with unlimited memory.
# virsh start <vm-name>

2. Check memtune status.
# virsh memtune <vm-name> --live
hard_limit     : unlimited
soft_limit     : unlimited
swap_hard_limit: unlimited

3. Try to change --hard-limit with memtune.
# virsh memtune <vm-name> --hard-limit 100000000 --live

Result:
error: Unable to change memory parameters
error: invalid argument: memory hard_limit tunable value must be lower than swap_hard_limit

Expected result:
Change hard limit successfully.

Additional info:
This only happens for new started VM. 
After change limits manually to 'unlimited' with:

# virsh memtune <vm-name> --hard-limit -1 --swap-hard-limit -1 --live

, memtune works fine with step 3.

Comment 1 Hao Liu 2013-10-29 10:01:59 UTC

In the following part of qemuDomainSetMemoryParameters() in src/qemu/qemu_driver.c ,
when the VM is fresh started, vm->def->mem.swap_hard_limit is 0, then the
comparison is true.
when --swap-hard-limit is manually set to -1, then vm->def->mem.swap_hard_limit
is the maximum ulong, then this comparison is false.

    if (set_swap_hard_limit || set_hard_limit) {
        unsigned long long mem_limit = vm->def->mem.hard_limit;
        unsigned long long swap_limit = vm->def->mem.swap_hard_limit;

        if (set_swap_hard_limit)
            swap_limit = swap_hard_limit;

        if (set_hard_limit)
            mem_limit = hard_limit;

        if (virCompareLimitUlong(mem_limit, swap_limit) > 0) {
            virReportError(VIR_ERR_INVALID_ARG, "%s",
                           _("memory hard_limit tunable value must be lower "
                             "than swap_hard_limit"));
            goto cleanup;
        }
    }

So this might be caused by ambiguous representation of unlimited memory.

Comment 3 Jincheng Miao 2013-11-19 02:28:37 UTC

Need to adopt this patch from upstream:

commit 19e7c04dce34afeb9a762471e09777de7d219db8
Author: Bing Bu Cao <mars.ibm.com>
Date:   Fri Oct 11 14:50:33 2013 +0800

    util: fix two virCompareLimitUlong bugs
    
    The helper function virCompareLimitUlong compares limit values,
    where value of 0 is equal to unlimited. If the latter parameter is 0,
    it should return -1 instead of 1, hence the user can only set hard_limit whe
    swap_hard_limit currently is unlimited.
    
    Worse, all callers pass 2 64-bit values, but on 32-bit platforms,
    the second argument was silently truncated to 32 bits, which
    could lead to incorrect computations.

Comment 4 Martin Kletzander 2013-11-19 09:05:07 UTC

Thanks for the info, but unfortunately that's not enough since upstream is currently a bit broken as well.

Comment 5 Martin Kletzander 2013-12-10 08:02:57 UTC

Rest of the upstream code is waiting for review (don't mind the misleading subject):

https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2013-December/msg00434.html
and
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2013-December/msg00501.html

Comment 8 Hao Liu 2013-12-16 05:21:37 UTC

This fix is VERIFIED.

Verification Steps:
Same as https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1024272#c0
In step 3:
for libvirt-1.1.1-14.el7:
# virsh memtune <vm-name> --live --hard-limit 100000000
error: Unable to change memory parameters
error: invalid argument: memory hard_limit tunable value must be lower than swap_hard_limit

for libvirt-1.1.1-15.el7:
# virsh memtune <vm-name> --live --hard-limit 100000000

# virsh memtune <vm-name> --live 
hard_limit     : 100000000
soft_limit     : unlimited
swap_hard_limit: unlimited

So this bug is fixed and VERIFIED.

Comment 9 Ludek Smid 2014-06-13 12:05:29 UTC

This request was resolved in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0.

Contact your manager or support representative in case you have further questions about the request.