netdev - Re: [PATCH 0/5] Rust abstractions for network device drivers

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Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2023 20:05:59 +0900 (JST)
From: FUJITA Tomonori <fujita.tomonori@...il.com>
To: greg@...ah.com
Cc: fujita.tomonori@...il.com, alice@...l.io, andrew@...n.ch,
 kuba@...nel.org, netdev@...r.kernel.org, rust-for-linux@...r.kernel.org,
 aliceryhl@...gle.com, miguel.ojeda.sandonis@...il.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/5] Rust abstractions for network device drivers

Hi,

On Mon, 19 Jun 2023 11:46:38 +0200
Greg KH <greg@...ah.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 19, 2023 at 05:50:03PM +0900, FUJITA Tomonori wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> On Sat, 17 Jun 2023 12:08:26 +0200
>> Alice Ryhl <alice@...l.io> wrote:
>> 
>> > On 6/16/23 22:04, Andrew Lunn wrote:
>> >>> Yes, you can certainly put a WARN_ON in the destructor.
>> >>>
>> >>> Another possibility is to use a scope to clean up. I don't know
>> >>> anything
>> >>> about these skb objects are used, but you could have the user define a
>> >>> "process this socket" function that you pass a pointer to the skb,
>> >>> then make
>> >>> the return value be something that explains what should be done with
>> >>> the
>> >>> packet. Since you must return a value of the right type, this forces
>> >>> you to
>> >>> choose.
>> >>>
>> >>> Of course, this requires that the processing of packets can be
>> >>> expressed as
>> >>> a function call, where it only inspects the packet for the duration of
>> >>> that
>> >>> function call. (Lifetimes can ensure that the skb pointer does not
>> >>> escape
>> >>> the function.)
>> >>>
>> >>> Would something like that work?
>> >> I don't think so, at least not in the contest of an Rust Ethernet
>> >> driver.
>> >> There are two main flows.
>> >> A packet is received. An skb is allocated and the received packet is
>> >> placed into the skb. The Ethernet driver then hands the packet over to
>> >> the network stack. The network stack is free to do whatever it wants
>> >> with the packet. Things can go wrong within the driver, so at times it
>> >> needs to free the skb rather than pass it to the network stack, which
>> >> would be a drop.
>> >> The second flow is that the network stack has a packet it wants sent
>> >> out an Ethernet port, in the form of an skb. The skb gets passed to
>> >> the Ethernet driver. The driver will do whatever it needs to do to
>> >> pass the contents of the skb to the hardware. Once the hardware has
>> >> it, the driver frees the skb. Again, things can go wrong and it needs
>> >> to free the skb without sending it, which is a drop.
>> >> So the lifetime is not a simple function call.
>> >> The drop reason indicates why the packet was dropped. It should give
>> >> some indication of what problem occurred which caused the drop. So
>> >> ideally we don't want an anonymous drop. The C code does not enforce
>> >> that, but it would be nice if the rust wrapper to dispose of an skb
>> >> did enforce it.
>> > 
>> > It sounds like a destructor with WARN_ON is the best approach right
>> > now.
>> 
>> Better to simply BUG()? We want to make sure that a device driver
>> explicity calls a function that consumes a skb object (on tx path,
>> e.g., napi_consume_skb()). If a device driver doesn't call such, it's
>> a bug that should be found easily and fixed during the development. It
>> would be even better if the compiler could find such though.
> 
> No, BUG() means "I have given up all hope here because the hardware is
> broken and beyond repair so the machine will now crash and take all of
> your data with it because I don't know how to properly recover".  That
> should NEVER happen in a device driver, as that's very presumptious of
> it, and means the driver itself is broken.
> 
> Report the error back up the chain and handle it properly, that's the
> correct thing to do.

I see. Then netdev_warn() should be used instead.

Is it possible to handle the case where a device driver wrongly
doesn't consume a skb object?


>> If Rust bindings for netdev could help device developpers in such way,
>> it's worth an experiments? because looks like netdev subsystem accepts
>> more drivers for new hardware than other subsystems.
> 
> Have you looked at the IIO subsystem?  :)

No, I've not. Are there possible drivers that Rust could be useful
for?

thanks,