[virtio] Allow for long delays in processing transmit queue submissions

When using QEMU with the KVM accelerator, MMIO writes to the queue
doorbell register are likely to hit an ioeventfd region.  KVM will
signal readiness on the ioeventfd file descriptor (which will
eventually wake up the QEMU userspace process to handle the MMIO
write) and then immediately resume execution of the iPXE guest.

This can result in high latencies in processing submitted descriptors.
With the small transmit queue fill level used by iPXE, this can easily
overrun the transmit queue and result in large numbers of dropped
transmissions.

Increase the transmit queue fill level to utilise the whole queue if
needed, and use the transmission deferral mechanism to avoid dropping
packets when high latencies occur during operation.

Signed-off-by: Michael Brown <mcb30@ipxe.org>
2 files changed
tree: a20c3b6a3101718f249e8172818b4b8a54e3effd
  1. .github/
  2. contrib/
  3. src/
  4. CHANGELOG.md
  5. CONTRIBUTING.md
  6. COPYING
  7. COPYING.GPLv2
  8. COPYING.UBDL
  9. README.md
  10. RELEASE.md
  11. RELNOTES.tmpl.md
README.md

iPXE network bootloader

Build Coverity Release

iPXE is the leading open source network boot firmware. It provides a full PXE implementation enhanced with additional features such as:

  • boot from a web server via HTTP or HTTPS,

  • boot from an iSCSI, FCoE, or AoE SAN,

  • control the boot process with a script,

  • create interactive forms and menus.

You can use iPXE to replace the existing PXE ROM on your network card, or you can chainload into iPXE to obtain the features of iPXE without the hassle of reflashing.

iPXE is free, open-source software licensed under the GNU GPL (with some portions under GPL-compatible licences).

You can download the rolling release binaries (built from the latest commit), or use the most recent stable release.

For full documentation, visit the iPXE website.