Re: [RFC net-next PATCH 3/5] net: introduce XDP driver features interface

Daniel Borkmann
2017-05-21T00:58:26Z

On 05/20/2017 09:53 AM, Jesper Dangaard Brouer wrote:
> On Fri, 19 May 2017 19:13:29 +0200
> Daniel Borkmann <daniel@iogearbox.net> wrote:
>
>> On 05/18/2017 05:41 PM, Jesper Dangaard Brouer wrote:
>>> There is a fundamental difference between normal eBPF programs
>>> and (XDP) eBPF programs getting attached in a driver. For normal
>>> eBPF programs it is easy to add a new bpf feature, like a bpf
>>> helper, because is it strongly tied to the feature being
>>> available in the current core kernel code. When drivers invoke a
>>> bpf_prog, then it is not sufficient to simply relying on whether
>>> a bpf_helper exists or not. When a driver haven't implemented a
>>> given feature yet, then it is possible to expose uninitialized
>>> parts of xdp_buff. The driver pass in a pointer to xdp_buff,
>>> usually "allocated" on the stack, which must not be exposed.
>>
>> When xdp_buff is being extended, then we should at least zero
>> initialize all in-tree users that don't support or populate this
>> field, thus that it's not uninitialized memory. Better would be
>> to have a way to reject the prog in the first place until it's
>> implemented (but further comments on feature bits below).
>
> Going down a path where we need to zero out the xdp_buff looks a lot
> like the sk_buff zeroing, which is the top perf cost associated with
> SKBs see[1]. XDP is is about not repeating the same issue we had with
> the SKB...

But if we agree on implementing a certain feature that requires to
add a new member, then basic requirement should be that it needs to
be implementable by all XDP enabled drivers, so that users eventually
don't need to worry which driver they run to access a XDP feature.
In that case, zeroing that member until it gets properly implemented
is just temporary (and could be an incentive perhaps).

> [1] https://prototype-kernel.readthedocs.io/en/latest/blogposts/xdp25_eval_generic_xdp_tx.html#analyzing-build-skb-and-memset
>
>>> Only two user visible NETIF_F_XDP_* net_device feature flags are
>>> exposed via ethtool (-k) seen as "xdp" and "xdp-partial".
>>> The "xdp-partial" is detected when there is not feature equality
>>> between kernel and driver, and a netdev_warn is given.
>>
>> I think having something like a NETIF_F_XDP_BIT for ethtool to
>> indicate support as "xdp" is quite useful. Avoids having to grep
>> the kernel tree for ndo_xdp callback. ;) A "xdp-partial" would
>> still be unclear/confusing to the user whether his program loads
>> or doesn't which is the only thing a user (or some loading infra)
>> cares about eventually, so one still needs to go trying to load
>> the XDP code to see whether that fails for the native case.
>
> Good that we agree on usefulness of the NETIF_F_XDP_BIT. The
> "xdp-partial" or "xdp-challenged" is an early indication to the user
> that they should complain to the vendor. I tried to keep it simple
> towards the user. Do you think every feature bit should be exposed to
> userspace?

That would potentially require us to go down that path and expose
feature bits for everything, even something as silly as new flags
for a specific helper that requires some sort of additional support.
We probably rather want to keep such thing in the kernel for now
and potentially reject loads instead.

>>> The idea is that XDP_DRV_* feature bits define a contract between
>>> the driver and the kernel, giving a reliable way to know that XDP
>>> features a driver promised to implement. Thus, knowing what bpf
>>> side features are safe to allow.
>>>
>>> There are 3 levels of features: "required", "devel" and "optional".
>>>
>>> The motivation is pushing driver vendors forward to support all
>>> the new XDP features. Once a given feature bit is moved into
>>> the "required" features, the kernel will reject loading XDP
>>> program if feature isn't implemented by driver. Features under
>>> developement, require help from the bpf infrastrucure to detect
>>> when a given helper or direct-access is used, using a bpf_prog
>>> bit to mark a need for the feature, and pulling in this bit in
>>> the xdp_features_check(). When all drivers have implemented
>>> a "devel" feature, it can be moved to the "required" feature and
>>
>> The problem is that once you add bits markers to bpf_prog like we
>> used to do in the past, then as you do in patch 4/5 with the
>> xdp_rxhash_needed bit, they will need to be turned /on/ unconditionally
>> when a prog has tail calls.
>
> Yes, with tail calls, we have to enable all features. But that is a
> good thing, as it forces vendors to quickly implement all features.
> And it is no different from moving a feature into the "required" bits,
> once all drivers implement it. It is only a limitation for tail calls,
> and something we can fix later (for handling this for tail calls).

But the issue I pointed out with this approach is that XDP programs
using tail calls will suddenly break and get rejected from one
version to another.

That's basically breaking the contract we have today where it must
be guaranteed that older programs keep working on newer kernels,
exactly the same with uapi. Breaking user programs is a no-go,
not a good thing at all (it will hurt users and they move on with
something else). So it's not something we can 'fix' at some later
point in time; such feature detection would need to consider this
from day 1.

> BPF have some nice features of evaluating the input program
> "load-time", which is what I'm taking advantage of as an optimization
> here (let use this nice bpf property). It is only tail calls that
> cannot evaluate this "load-time". Thus, if you care about tail calls,
> supporting intermediate features, we could later fix that by adding a
> runtime feature check in the case of tail calls.