Re: [PATCH net-next v2] net: ctnetlink: support filtering by zone

Ilya Maximets
2024-02-02T11:03:56Z

On 12/22/23 13:01, Pablo Neira Ayuso wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 27, 2023 at 11:49:16AM +0000, Felix Huettner wrote:
>> conntrack zones are heavily used by tools like openvswitch to run
>> multiple virtual "routers" on a single machine. In this context each
>> conntrack zone matches to a single router, thereby preventing
>> overlapping IPs from becoming issues.
>> In these systems it is common to operate on all conntrack entries of a
>> given zone, e.g. to delete them when a router is deleted. Previously this
>> required these tools to dump the full conntrack table and filter out the
>> relevant entries in userspace potentially causing performance issues.
>>
>> To do this we reuse the existing CTA_ZONE attribute. This was previous
>> parsed but not used during dump and flush requests. Now if CTA_ZONE is
>> set we filter these operations based on the provided zone.
>> However this means that users that previously passed CTA_ZONE will
>> experience a difference in functionality.
>>
>> Alternatively CTA_FILTER could have been used for the same
>> functionality. However it is not yet supported during flush requests and
>> is only available when using AF_INET or AF_INET6.
>
> For the record, this is applied to nf-next.

Hi, Felix and Pablo.

I was looking through the code and the following part is bothering me:

diff --git a/net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_netlink.c b/net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_netlink.c
index fb0ae15e96df..4e9133f61251 100644
--- a/net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_netlink.c
+++ b/net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_netlink.c
@@ -1148,6 +1149,10 @@ static int ctnetlink_filter_match(struct nf_conn *ct, void *data)
if (filter->family && nf_ct_l3num(ct) != filter->family)
goto ignore_entry;

+ if (filter->zone.id != NF_CT_DEFAULT_ZONE_ID &&
+ !nf_ct_zone_equal_any(ct, &filter->zone))
+ goto ignore_entry;
+
if (filter->orig_flags) {
tuple = nf_ct_tuple(ct, IP_CT_DIR_ORIGINAL);
if (!ctnetlink_filter_match_tuple(&filter->orig, tuple,

If I'm reading that right, the default zone is always flushed, even if the
user requested to flush a different zone. I.e. the entry is never ignored
for a default zone. Is that correct or am I reading that wrong?

If my observation is correct, then I don't think this functionality can
actually be used by applications as it does something unexpected.

Best regards, Ilya Maximets.