Subject: [PATCH v4 4/9] vsock/virtio: Resize receive buffers so that each SKB fits in a 4K page

From: Will Deacon <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2025 10:01:11 +0100

When allocating receive buffers for the vsock virtio RX virtqueue, an
SKB is allocated with a 4140 data payload (the 44-byte packet header +
VIRTIO_VSOCK_DEFAULT_RX_BUF_SIZE). Even when factoring in the SKB
overhead, the resulting 8KiB allocation thanks to the rounding in
kmalloc_reserve() is wasteful (~3700 unusable bytes) and results in a
higher-order page allocation on systems with 4KiB pages just for the
sake of a few hundred bytes of packet data.

Limit the vsock virtio RX buffers to 4KiB per SKB, resulting in much
better memory utilisation and removing the need to allocate higher-order
pages entirely.

Reviewed-by: Stefano Garzarella <[email-masked]>
Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <[email-masked]>
---
 include/linux/virtio_vsock.h     | 7 ++++++-
 net/vmw_vsock/virtio_transport.c | 2 +-
 2 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/include/linux/virtio_vsock.h b/include/linux/virtio_vsock.h
index 97465f378ade..879f1dfa7d3a 100644
--- a/include/linux/virtio_vsock.h
+++ b/include/linux/virtio_vsock.h
@@ -106,7 +106,12 @@ static inline size_t virtio_vsock_skb_len(struct sk_buff *skb)
 	return (size_t)(skb_end_pointer(skb) - skb->head);
 }
 
-#define VIRTIO_VSOCK_DEFAULT_RX_BUF_SIZE	(1024 * 4)
+/* Dimension the RX SKB so that the entire thing fits exactly into
+ * a single 4KiB page. This avoids wasting memory due to alloc_skb()
+ * rounding up to the next page order and also means that we
+ * don't leave higher-order pages sitting around in the RX queue.
+ */
+#define VIRTIO_VSOCK_DEFAULT_RX_BUF_SIZE	SKB_WITH_OVERHEAD(1024 * 4)
 #define VIRTIO_VSOCK_MAX_BUF_SIZE		0xFFFFFFFFUL
 #define VIRTIO_VSOCK_MAX_PKT_BUF_SIZE		(1024 * 64)
 
diff --git a/net/vmw_vsock/virtio_transport.c b/net/vmw_vsock/virtio_transport.c
index 0166919f8705..39f346890f7f 100644
--- a/net/vmw_vsock/virtio_transport.c
+++ b/net/vmw_vsock/virtio_transport.c
@@ -307,7 +307,7 @@ virtio_transport_cancel_pkt(struct vsock_sock *vsk)
 
 static void virtio_vsock_rx_fill(struct virtio_vsock *vsock)
 {
-	int total_len = VIRTIO_VSOCK_DEFAULT_RX_BUF_SIZE + VIRTIO_VSOCK_SKB_HEADROOM;
+	int total_len = VIRTIO_VSOCK_DEFAULT_RX_BUF_SIZE;
 	struct scatterlist pkt, *p;
 	struct virtqueue *vq;
 	struct sk_buff *skb;
-- 
2.50.0.727.gbf7dc18ff4-goog