# Re: \[PATCH RFC 0/8\] vsock: add datagram support to virtio and vhost

- From: Alexei Starovoitov \<hidden\>
- Date: 2026-10-28 17:25:33 
- List: netdev
- Page: https://ratatoskr.run/netdev/2026/10/17819152
- Thread: https://ratatoskr.run/virtualization/2026/10/17818140/t.md

```text
On Wed, Oct 28, 2026 at 09:04 AM Sergio Lopez [ref] wrote:
> This series implements SOCK_DGRAM support for virtio-vsock and
> vhost-vsock, allowing applications to exchange connectionless messages
> through the existing AF_VSOCK datagram API.

The cover doesn't say who needs it.

Bobby and Amery took the same feature to v6:
https://lore.kernel.org/all/20240710212555.1617795-1-amery.hung@bytedance.com/
Stefano said there that it can work well and that the virtio spec change
is the next step. The last mails of the thread have Amery's v7 WIP and a
short list of what is left.
The cover doesn't mention it. The spec change is still missing.

Why not finish v7 instead ?

This RFC goes the other way in these places:

  what               v6                        this RFC
  -----------------  ------------------------  ----------------------------
  (cid, port) space  own bind table for dgram  shared with stream. The 2nd
                                               bind() gets EADDRINUSE
  vsk->transport     empty until connect(),    g2h or h2g, picked in
                     lookup per packet         socket(). -ENODEV with
                                               vsock_loopback only
  routing            one helper for stream     2nd copy of the chain in
                     and dgram                 vsock_assign_transport()
  recvmsg()          in af_vsock.c,            dgram_dequeue() stays,
                     no dgram_dequeue()        dgram_payload_len() is new
  VMCI               fallback                  first. No virtio dgram when
                                               its module is loaded
  dgram > RX buffer  drop, EHOSTUNREACH in     every RX buffer is 64K
                     the error queue

> Datagrams use destination-based routing across guest-to-host,
> host-to-guest and loopback transports while retaining the socket's
> transport state. VMCI keeps priority as the dedicated datagram

A dgram socket uses two members of struct virtio_vsock_sock: tx_lock and
bytes_unsent. They serve SIOCOUTQ only.
virtio_transport_alloc_skb() does skb_set_owner_w() already.
udp_ioctl() returns sk_wmem_alloc_get() for SIOCOUTQ.

Without them a dgram socket has no transport state, like in v6.
Then no need for the owner transport, dgram_transport_match(),
fallback_transport, tx_accounted, the skb destructor, etc.

> transport.  Guest RX buffers accommodate complete messages when
> datagrams are negotiated, preserving message boundaries.

That's 64K per RX buffer instead of 4K, for stream and seqpacket too.
It undoes commit 03a92f036a04 ("vsock/virtio: Resize receive buffers so
that each SKB fits in a 4K page").

pskb_trim_unique() doesn't reduce skb->truesize. So a datagram of 1 byte
charges more than 64K to sk_rmem_alloc of the guest socket.
The default sk_rcvbuf is about 208K on x86-64. The 5th datagram in the
queue is dropped.
```