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+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+.. _virtiofs_index:
+
+===================================================
+virtiofs: virtio-fs host<->guest shared file system
+===================================================
+
+- Copyright (C) 2019 Red Hat, Inc.
+
+Introduction
+============
+The virtiofs file system for Linux implements a driver for the paravirtualized
+VIRTIO "virtio-fs" device for guest<->host file system sharing.  It allows a
+guest to mount a directory that has been exported on the host.
+
+Guests often require access to files residing on the host or remote systems.
+Use cases include making files available to new guests during installation,
+booting from a root file system located on the host, persistent storage for
+stateless or ephemeral guests, and sharing a directory between guests.
+
+Although it is possible to use existing network file systems for some of these
+tasks, they require configuration steps that are hard to automate and they
+expose the storage network to the guest.  The virtio-fs device was designed to
+solve these problems by providing file system access without networking.
+
+Furthermore the virtio-fs device takes advantage of the co-location of the
+guest and host to increase performance and provide semantics that are not
+possible with network file systems.
+
+Usage
+=====
+Mount file system with tag ``myfs`` on ``/mnt``:
+
+.. code-block:: sh
+
+  guest# mount -t virtiofs myfs /mnt
+
+Please see https://virtio-fs.gitlab.io/ for details on how to configure QEMU
+and the virtiofsd daemon.
+
+Mount options
+-------------
+
+virtiofs supports general VFS mount options, for example, remount,
+ro, rw, context, etc. It also supports FUSE mount options.
+
+atime behavior
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+The atime-related mount options, for example, noatime, strictatime,
+are ignored. The atime behavior for virtiofs is the same as the
+underlying filesystem of the directory that has been exported
+on the host.
+
+Internals
+=========
+Since the virtio-fs device uses the FUSE protocol for file system requests, the
+virtiofs file system for Linux is integrated closely with the FUSE file system
+client.  The guest acts as the FUSE client while the host acts as the FUSE
+server.  The /dev/fuse interface between the kernel and userspace is replaced
+with the virtio-fs device interface.
+
+FUSE requests are placed into a virtqueue and processed by the host.  The
+response portion of the buffer is filled in by the host and the guest handles
+the request completion.
+
+Mapping /dev/fuse to virtqueues requires solving differences in semantics
+between /dev/fuse and virtqueues.  Each time the /dev/fuse device is read, the
+FUSE client may choose which request to transfer, making it possible to
+prioritize certain requests over others.  Virtqueues have queue semantics and
+it is not possible to change the order of requests that have been enqueued.
+This is especially important if the virtqueue becomes full since it is then
+impossible to add high priority requests.  In order to address this difference,
+the virtio-fs device uses a "hiprio" virtqueue specifically for requests that
+have priority over normal requests.