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<section id="inter-vm-shared-memory-device">
<h1>Inter-VM Shared Memory device<a class="headerlink" href="#inter-vm-shared-memory-device" title="Link to this heading"></a></h1>
<p>On Linux hosts, a shared memory device is available. The basic syntax
is:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">qemu-system-x86_64 -device ivshmem-plain,memdev=hostmem</pre>
<p>where hostmem names a host memory backend. For a POSIX shared memory
backend, use something like</p>
<div class="highlight-default notranslate"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="o">-</span><span class="nb">object</span> <span class="n">memory</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">backend</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">file</span><span class="p">,</span><span class="n">size</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="n">M</span><span class="p">,</span><span class="n">share</span><span class="p">,</span><span class="n">mem</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">path</span><span class="o">=/</span><span class="n">dev</span><span class="o">/</span><span class="n">shm</span><span class="o">/</span><span class="n">ivshmem</span><span class="p">,</span><span class="nb">id</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="n">hostmem</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>If desired, interrupts can be sent between guest VMs accessing the same
shared memory region. Interrupt support requires using a shared memory
server and using a chardev socket to connect to it. The code for the
shared memory server is qemu.git/contrib/ivshmem-server. An example
syntax when using the shared memory server is:</p>
<pre class="literal-block"># First start the ivshmem server once and for all
ivshmem-server -p pidfile -S path -m shm-name -l shm-size -n vectors
# Then start your qemu instances with matching arguments
qemu-system-x86_64 -device ivshmem-doorbell,vectors=vectors,chardev=id
-chardev socket,path=path,id=id</pre>
<p>When using the server, the guest will be assigned a VM ID (&gt;=0) that
allows guests using the same server to communicate via interrupts.
Guests can read their VM ID from a device register (see
<a class="reference internal" href="../../specs/ivshmem-spec.html"><span class="doc">Device Specification for Inter-VM shared memory device</span></a>).</p>
<section id="migration-with-ivshmem">
<h2>Migration with ivshmem<a class="headerlink" href="#migration-with-ivshmem" title="Link to this heading"></a></h2>
<p>With device property <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">master=on</span></code>, the guest will copy the shared
memory on migration to the destination host. With <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">master=off</span></code>, the
guest will not be able to migrate with the device attached. In the
latter case, the device should be detached and then reattached after
migration using the PCI hotplug support.</p>
<p>At most one of the devices sharing the same memory can be master. The
master must complete migration before you plug back the other devices.</p>
</section>
<section id="ivshmem-and-hugepages">
<h2>ivshmem and hugepages<a class="headerlink" href="#ivshmem-and-hugepages" title="Link to this heading"></a></h2>
<p>Instead of specifying the &lt;shm size&gt; using POSIX shm, you may specify a
memory backend that has hugepage support:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">qemu-system-x86_64 -object memory-backend-file,size=1G,mem-path=/dev/hugepages/my-shmem-file,share,id=mb1
-device ivshmem-plain,memdev=mb1</pre>
<p>ivshmem-server also supports hugepages mount points with the <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">-m</span></code>
memory path argument.</p>
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