Date:   Wed, 1 Sep 2021 10:45:43 -0700
From:   Martin KaFai Lau <kafai@...com>
To:     Cong Wang <xiyou.wangcong@...il.com>,
        Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <toke@...hat.com>,
        John Fastabend <john.fastabend@...il.com>
CC:     Linux Kernel Network Developers <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
        bpf <bpf@...r.kernel.org>, Cong Wang <cong.wang@...edance.com>,
        Jamal Hadi Salim <jhs@...atatu.com>,
        Jiri Pirko <jiri@...nulli.us>
Subject: Re: [RFC Patch net-next] net_sched: introduce eBPF based Qdisc

On Wed, Sep 01, 2021 at 12:42:03PM +0200, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen wrote:
> John Fastabend <john.fastabend@...il.com> writes:
> 
> > Cong Wang wrote:
> >> On Tue, Aug 24, 2021 at 4:47 PM Martin KaFai Lau <kafai@...com> wrote:
> >> > Please explain more on this.  What is currently missing
> >> > to make qdisc in struct_ops possible?
> >> 
> >> I think you misunderstand this point. The reason why I avoid it is
> >> _not_ anything is missing, quite oppositely, it is because it requires
> >> a lot of work to implement a Qdisc with struct_ops approach, literally
> >> all those struct Qdisc_ops (not to mention struct Qdisc_class_ops).
> >> WIth current approach, programmers only need to implement two
> >> eBPF programs (enqueue and dequeue).
_if_ it is using as a qdisc object/interface,
the patch "looks" easier because it obscures some of the ops/interface
from the bpf user.  The user will eventually ask for more flexibility
and then an on-par interface as the kernel's qdisc.  If there are some
common 'ops', the common bpf code can be shared as a library in userspace
or there is also kfunc call to call into the kernel implementation.
For existing kernel qdisc author,  it will be easier to use the same
interface also.

> > Another idea. Rather than work with qdisc objects which creates all
> > these issues with how to work with existing interfaces, filters, etc.
> > Why not create an sk_buff map? Then this can be used from the existing
> > egress/ingress hooks independent of the actual qdisc being used.
> 
> I agree. In fact, I'm working on doing just this for XDP, and I see no
> reason why the map type couldn't be reused for skbs as well. Doing it
> this way has a couple of benefits:
> 
> - It leaves more flexibility to BPF: want a simple FIFO queue? just
>   implement that with a single queue map. Or do you want to build a full
>   hierarchical queueing structure? Just instantiate as many queue maps
>   as you need to achieve this. Etc.
Agree.  Regardless how the interface may look like,
I even think being able to queue/dequeue an skb into different bpf maps
should be the first thing to do here.  Looking forward to your patches.

> 
> - The behaviour is defined entirely by BPF program behaviour, and does
>   not require setting up a qdisc hierarchy in addition to writing BPF
>   code.
Interesting idea.  If it does not need to use the qdisc object/interface
and be able to do the qdisc hierarchy setup in a programmable way, it may
be nice.  It will be useful for the future patches to come with some
bpf prog examples to do that.

> 
> - It should be possible to structure the hooks in a way that allows
>   reusing queueing algorithm implementations between the qdisc and XDP
>   layers.
> 
> > You mention skb should not be exposed to userspace? Why? Whats the
> > reason for this? Anyways we can make kernel only maps if we want or
> > scrub the data before passing it to userspace. We do this already in
> > some cases.
> 
> Yup, that's my approach as well.
> 
> > IMO it seems cleaner and more general to allow sk_buffs
> > to be stored in maps and pulled back out later for enqueue/dequeue.
> 
> FWIW there's some gnarly details here (for instance, we need to make
> sure the BPF program doesn't leak packet references after they are
> dequeued from the map). My idea is to use a scheme similar to what we do
> for XDP_REDIRECT, where a helper sets some hidden variables and doesn't
> actually remove the packet from the queue until the BPF program exits
> (so the kernel can make sure things are accounted correctly).
The verifier is tracking the sk's references.  Can it be reused to
track the skb's reference?

> 
> > I think one trick might be how to trigger the dequeue event on
> > transition from stopped to running net_device or other events like
> > this, but that could be solved with another program attached to
> > those events to kick the dequeue logic.
> 
> This is actually easy in the qdisc case, I think: there's already a
> qdisc_dequeue() operation, which just needs to execute a BPF program
> that picks which packet to dequeue (by pulling it off a queue map). For
> XDP we do need a new hook, on driver TX completion or something like
> that. Details TBD. Also, we need a way to BPF to kick an idle interface
> and make it start transmitting; that way we can implement a traffic
> shaper (that delays packets) by using BPF timers :)
> 
> -Toke
> 

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