netdev - Re: [RFC PATCH iproute2-next] System specification health API

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Date:   Sun, 16 Sep 2018 13:37:04 +0300
From:   Eran Ben Elisha <eranbe@...lanox.com>
To:     Jakub Kicinski <jakub.kicinski@...ronome.com>
Cc:     netdev@...r.kernel.org, Jiri Pirko <jiri@...lanox.com>,
        Andy Gospodarek <andrew.gospodarek@...adcom.com>,
        Michael Chan <michael.chan@...adcom.com>,
        Simon Horman <simon.horman@...ronome.com>,
        Alexander Duyck <alexander.duyck@...il.com>,
        Andrew Lunn <andrew@...n.ch>,
        Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@...il.com>,
        Tal Alon <talal@...lanox.com>,
        Ariel Almog <ariela@...lanox.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH iproute2-next] System specification health API



On 9/13/2018 8:36 PM, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Sep 2018 11:18:15 +0300, Eran Ben Elisha wrote:
>> The health spec is targeted for Real Time Alerting, in order to know when
>> something bad had happened to a PCI device
> 
> By spec you mean some standards body spec you implement or this
> proposal is a spec?

This proposal is a spec

> 
>> - Provide alert debug information
>> - Self healing
>> - If problem needs vendor support, provide a way to gather all needed debugging
>>    information.
>>
>> The health contains sensors which sense for malfunction. Once sensor triggered,
>> actions such as logs and correction can be taken.
>> Sensors are sensing the health state and can trigger correction action.
>>
>> The sensors are divided into the following groups
>> - Hardware sensor - a sensor which is triggered by the device due to
>>    malfunction.
>> - Software sensor - a sensor which is triggered by the software due to
>>    malfunction.
>> Both group of sensors can be triggered due to error event or due to a periodic check.
>>
>> Actions are the way to handle sensor events. Action can be in one of the
>> following groups:
>> - Dump -  SW trace, SW dump, HW trace, HW dump
>> - Reset - Surgical correction (e.g. modify Q, flush Q, reset of device, etc)
>> Actions can be performed by SW or HW.
>>
>> User is allowed to enable or disable sensors and sensor2action mapping.
>>
>> This RFC man page patch describes the suggested API of devlink-health in order
>> to control sensors and actions.
> 
> I like the idea of configuring response to events like this, although
> I'm not sure the name sensor is appropriate here - perhaps exception or
> error would be better?

I was trying to avoid the negativity description. Have it called sensor 
to avoid restricting the API for errors / exceptions only. I got the 
same type of comment from Andrew as well devlink-health->devlink-bug.

But if other vendors driver developers don't see it can be expanded to 
sensor which are not errors, then I guess we can refactor the names.

Are there going to be values reported?

It depends on the sensor. If it has data that would help in the debug, 
then I assume yes, via the dumps.

> 
> I'm not so sure about HW sensors in relation to existing HWMON
> infrastructure...  I assume you're targeting things like say some HW
> engine/block reporting it encountered an error?  Sounds good, too.

yes, exactly.

> 
> Are the actions all envisioned to be performed by the driver?
> Firmware?  Hardware?  I guess that distinction can be added later.
> For FW/HW actions we would go back to the problem of persistence of
> the setting since it was only implemented for params :S

The problem is not with FW action, the problem is when you try to set 
sensor2action mapping for the FW/HW. this will need persistence 
configuration mode. Sensor2action in SW shall be run-time mode (at least 
as a start).
But it sound as this need some more tuning, to make it clear.

> 
> Is the dump option going to tie back into region snapshots?
> 
no necessarily, dumping SW objects as well can be helpful