netdev - Re: [PATCH net-next 2/2] virtio-net: simplify XDP handling in small buffer

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:   Thu, 1 Mar 2018 09:02:06 +0100
From:   Jesper Dangaard Brouer <brouer@...hat.com>
To:     Jason Wang <jasowang@...hat.com>
Cc:     mst@...hat.com, virtualization@...ts.linux-foundation.org,
        netdev@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        john.fastabend@...il.com, brouer@...hat.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next 2/2] virtio-net: simplify XDP handling in small
 buffer

On Thu,  1 Mar 2018 11:19:05 +0800 Jason Wang <jasowang@...hat.com> wrote:

> We used to do data copy through xdp_linearize_page() for the buffer
> without sufficient headroom, it brings extra complexity without
> helping for the performance. So this patch remove it and switch to use
> generic XDP routine to handle this case.

I don't like where this is going.  I don't like intermixing the native
XDP and generic XDP in this way, for several reasons:

1. XDP generic is not feature complete, e.g. cpumap will drop these
   packets. It might not be possible to implement some features, think
   of (AF_XDP) zero-copy.

2. This can easily cause out-of-order packets.

3. It makes it harder to troubleshoot, when diagnosing issues
   around #1, we have a hard time determining what path an XDP packet
   took (the xdp tracepoints doesn't know).

[...]
> @@ -590,25 +526,14 @@ static struct sk_buff *receive_small(struct net_device *dev,
>  		if (unlikely(hdr->hdr.gso_type))
>  			goto err_xdp;
>  
> +		/* This happnes when headroom is not enough because
> +		 * the buffer was refilled before XDP is set. This
> +		 * only happen for several packets, for simplicity,
> +		 * offload them to generic XDP routine.

In my practical tests, I also saw that sometime my ping packets were
traveling this code-path, even after a long time when XDP were attached.

This worries me a bit, for troubleshooting purposes... as this can give
a strange user experience given point #1.

> +		 */
>  		if (unlikely(xdp_headroom < virtnet_get_headroom(vi))) {
> -			int offset = buf - page_address(page) + header_offset;
> -			unsigned int tlen = len + vi->hdr_len;
> -			u16 num_buf = 1;

-- 
Best regards,
  Jesper Dangaard Brouer
  MSc.CS, Principal Kernel Engineer at Red Hat
  LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/brouer