netdev - [PATCH] selftests/net: deflake GRO tests and fix return value and output

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Message-ID: <20250223151949.1886080-1-krakauer@google.com>
Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2025 07:19:49 -0800
From: Kevin Krakauer <krakauer@...gle.com>
To: kuba@...nel.org
Cc: davem@...emloft.net, edumazet@...gle.com, horms@...nel.org, 
	krakauer@...gle.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, 
	linux-kselftest@...r.kernel.org, netdev@...r.kernel.org, pabeni@...hat.com, 
	shuah@...nel.org
Subject: [PATCH] selftests/net: deflake GRO tests and fix return value and output

Thanks for the review! I'll split this up. Do you think it's better as two
patchsets -- one for stability/deflaking, one for return value and output
cleanup -- or as a single patchset with several commits?

> To be clear - are you running this over veth or a real device?

Over a veth.

>> Set the device's napi_defer_hard_irqs to 50 so that GRO is less likely
>> to immediately flush. This already happened in setup_loopback.sh, but
>> wasn't added to setup_veth.sh. This accounts for most of the reduction
>> in flakiness.
>
>That doesn't make intuitive sense to me. If we already defer flushes
>why do we need to also defer IRQs?

Yep, the behavior here is weird. I ran `gro.sh -t large` 1000 times with each of
the following setups (all inside strace to increase flakiness):

- gro_flush_timeout=1ms, napi_defer_hard_irqs=0  --> failed to GRO 29 times
- gro_flush_timeout=5ms, napi_defer_hard_irqs=0  --> failed to GRO 45 times
- gro_flush_timeout=50ms, napi_defer_hard_irqs=0 --> failed to GRO 35 times
- gro_flush_timeout=1ms, napi_defer_hard_irqs=1  --> failed to GRO 0 times
- gro_flush_timeout=1ms, napi_defer_hard_irqs=50 --> failed to GRO 0 times

napi_defer_hard_irqs is clearly having an effect. And deferring once is enough.
I believe that deferring IRQs prevents anything else from causing a GRO flush
before gro_flush_timeout expires. While waiting for the timeout to expire, an
incoming packet can cause napi_complete_done and thus napi_gro_flush to run.
Outgoing packets from the veth can also cause this: veth_xmit calls
__veth_xdp_flush, which only actually does anything when IRQs are enabled.

So napi_defer_hard_irqs=1 seems sufficient to allow the full gro_flush_timeout
to expire before flushing GRO.