feat: virtio-blk filesystem emulation + overlay CoW block device

[chaosreload]

Summary

This PR implements Step 1 of the zeroboot enhancement plan: virtio-blk MMIO emulation with overlay CoW isolation, enabling full filesystem access in forked VMs without relying on Firecracker at runtime.

Changes

New: src/vmm/virtio_blk.rs

• VirtioBlk: Full virtio-blk MMIO emulator handling KVM_EXIT_MmioWrite/Read
  • Processes QueueNotify → reads virtq descriptors from guest memory
  • Handles read/write/flush requests → updates used ring → injects IRQ (GSI 5)
  • Fixes VIRTIO_F_EVENT_IDX suppression: updates avail_event after queue drain
• OverlayBlockDevice: Per-fork in-memory CoW layer
  • Read: check HashMap<sector, Vec<u8>> first, fall back to pread() on base image
  • Write: store in overlay only — base image is never modified (Arc<File> shared read-only)
  • Isolation: each fork's overlay is independent and discarded on drop

Modified: src/vmm/vmstate.rs

• Virtio queue address detection: supports both Firecracker v1.12 (raw u64) and v1.15+ (Versionize [0x02][u32] prefix format)
• XSAVE detection: relaxed MXCSR validation to tolerate exception flags set by numpy/Python
• Multi-anchor offset detection: EFER + CR0 + APIC_BASE cross-validation instead of single IOAPIC anchor

Modified: src/vmm/kvm.rs

• Integrate VirtioBlk into ForkedVm
• Route MmioRead/MmioWrite exits to virtio-blk emulator
• fork_cow() accepts block_file: Option<Arc<File>> parameter
• Memory loading uses sendfile instead of std::fs::read to avoid double-buffering

Modified: guest/init.c

• Added CODE:<python_code> command: executes via popen("python3 /tmp/zb_code.py 2>&1")
• cat <path> now works with full filesystem access
• Statically linked for minimal rootfs dependency

Modified: src/main.rs, src/api/handlers.rs

• Auto-load block device from {workdir}/rootfs_path or ZEROBOOT_ROOTFS env var
• cmd_template() saves rootfs absolute path after snapshot creation

Modified: docs/, README.md

• New "Virtio-Blk Filesystem Emulation" section in ARCHITECTURE.md
• Filesystem Access section in API.md
• Updated README benchmarks with measured numbers

Test Results

Tested on c8i.xlarge with nested virtualization enabled (Ubuntu 22.04, Python 3.10, numpy 2.2.6, pandas 2.3.3):

Test	Result	Latency
Fork (KVM + CoW) P50	✅	655 µs
Fork (KVM + CoW) P99	✅	996 µs
Fork + echo hello P50	✅	5.8 ms
CODE:print(1+1)	✅ 2	205 ms
CODE:import numpy as np; print(np.array([1,2,3]).mean())	✅ 2.0	450 ms
cat /etc/os-release	✅ full output	30 ms
Memory per fork (100 concurrent)	✅	~169 KB

Known Limitations

• Python exec latency (200–450ms) includes on-demand .so loading through virtio-blk. Future: pre-warm pages before snapshot to eliminate disk I/O post-fork.
• MMIO virtio uses polling (KVM_EXIT_MMIO). Future: KVM_IOEVENTFD + KVM_IRQFD for lower QueueNotify latency.
• CPUID snapshot restore falls back to host CPUID under nested virtualization (cosmetic warning only).

Rootfs Build

See ARCHITECTURE.md for full rootfs build instructions (Ubuntu 22.04 + Python 3.10 + numpy/pandas + static init binary).

[chaosreload]

Hi, just a heads-up on the related PRs I have opened to keep things reviewable in smaller pieces:

• docs: add QUICKSTART guide, update ARCHITECTURE and API docs #11 — Documentation only: new QUICKSTART guide, updated ARCHITECTURE and API docs. No code changes.
• ci: add GitHub Actions workflow for build, lint and test #12 — CI only: adds a GitHub Actions workflow (build + clippy + test on every push/PR to main).

This PR (#10) contains the core feature implementation. The docs in this PR overlap with #11 — if you prefer to review docs separately, feel free to merge #11 first and I can rebase this PR to remove the doc changes.

Happy to make any adjustments. Thanks for your time!

[chaosreload]

Hi @nekomeowww 👋 — Thanks again for your approval!

I noticed @shinohara-rin's CHANGES_REQUESTED review from March 13 is still showing as blocking. All the feedback from that review was fully addressed in the commits on March 14–16, and I've pinged shinohara-rin a couple of times since but haven't heard back.

Would you be able to dismiss the stale review and merge when you get a chance? CI is green and there are no unresolved conflicts. Really appreciate it! 🙏