Re: [RFC PATCH net-next 1/1] net: Support for switch port configuration

[Roopa Prabhu <roopa@cumulusnetworks.com>]

On 12/15/14, 6:40 AM, Thomas Graf wrote:
> On 12/15/14 at 02:29pm, Varlese, Marco wrote:
>>> All of these are highly generic and should *not* be passed through from user
>>> space to the driver directly but rather be properly abstracted as Roopa
>>> proposed. The value of this API is abstraction.
>> How would you let the user enable/disable features then? For instance, how would the user enable/disable flooding for broadcast packets (BFLOODING) on a given port? What I was proposing is to have a list of attributes (to be added in if_link.h) which can be tuned by the user using a tool like iproute2. What do you propose?
> Excellent, I agree with what you are saying. What set me off is that
> the patch does not reflect that yet. Instead, the patch introduces
> a pure Netlink pass-through API to the driver.
>
> I would expect the patch to:
>   1. Parse the Netlink messages and be aware of individual attributes
>   2. Validate them
>   3. Pass the configuration to the driver using an API that can also
>      be consumed from in-kernel users.
yes, exactly.
>
>> I think I have seen Roopa posting his updated ndo patch and getting some feedback by few people already and as long as I will be able to accomplish the use case described here I am happy with his way.
> I think Roopa's patches are supplementary. Not all switchdev users
> will be backed with a Linux Bridge. I therefore welcome your patches
> very much.
>
> The overlap is in the ndo. I think both the API you propose and
> Roopa's bridge code should use the same NDO.
>> I do not have an example right now of a vendor specific attribute but I was just saying that might happen (i.e. someone will have a feature not implemented by others?).
> That's fine. Once we have them we can consider adding vendor specific
> extensions.