Re: [PATCH net-next v2 0/2] flow_offload: add tc police parameters

Simon Horman
2022-02-18T10:38:29Z

On Thu, Feb 17, 2022 at 01:52:47PM +0200, Roi Dayan wrote:
> On 2022-02-17 1:34 PM, Simon Horman wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 17, 2022 at 08:28:01AM +0000, Jianbo Liu wrote:
> > > As a preparation for more advanced police offload in mlx5 (e.g.,
> > > jumping to another chain when bandwidth is not exceeded), extend the
> > > flow offload API with more tc-police parameters. Adjust existing
> > > drivers to reject unsupported configurations.
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have a concern that
> > a) patch 1 introduces a facility that may break existing drivers; and
> > b) patch 2 then fixes this
> >
> > I'd slightly prefer if the series was rearranged to avoid this problem.
> >
> > ...
>
> Hi Simon,
>
> It can't be rearranged as patch 2 can't compile without patch 1.
> Patch 1 only adds more information passing to the driver.
>
> The drivers functionality doesn't change. drivers today ignore
> police information, like actions, and still being ignored after patch 1.
>
> patch 2 updates the drivers to use that information instead of
> ignoring it. so it fixes the drivers that without patch 1 can't be
> fixed.

I think it would be possible, but...

On Thu, Feb 17, 2022 at 01:56:51PM +0200, Ido Schimmel wrote:

...

> Not sure what you mean by the above. Patch #1 extends the flow offload
> API with tc-police parameters that weren't communicated to drivers until
> now. Drivers still ignore the new parameters after this patch. It is
> only in patch #2 that these drivers reject configurations where the
> parameters are set.
>
> Therefore, the only breakage I see is the one that can happen after
> patch #2: unaware user space that was installing actions that weren't
> fully reflected to hardware.
>
> If we want to be on the safe side, it is possible to remove the errors,
> but keep the extack messages so that user space is at least somewhat
> aware.

Yes, I see what you mean.
I'm now comfortable with the way this patchset is arranged.