Re: [net-next,1/2] add iovnl netlink support

[Chris Wright <chrisw@redhat.com>]

* Arnd Bergmann (arnd@arndb.de) wrote:
> On Wednesday 21 April 2010, Scott Feldman wrote:
> > On 4/21/10 12:39 PM, "Arnd Bergmann" <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
> > 
> > >>> 1. Setting up the slave device
> > >>>  a) create an SR-IOV VF to assign to a guest
> > >>>  b) create a macvtap device to pass to qemu or vhost
> > >>>  c) attach a tap device to a bridge
> > >>>  d) create a macvlan device and put it into a container
> > >>>  e) create a virtual interface for a VMDq adapter
> > >> 
> > >> OK, but iovnl isn't doing this.
> > > 
> > > The set_mac_vlan that Scott's patch adds seems to implement 1a), as far
> > > as I can tell. Interestingly, this is not actually implemented in
> > > the enic driver in patch 2/2. So if we all agree that this is out of the
> > > scope of iovnl, let's just remove it from the interface and find another
> > > way for it (ethtool, iplink, ..., as listed above).
> > 
> > You're right, not needed for enic since mac addr is included with
> > port-profile push and vlan membership is implied by port-profile.  So I put
> > set_mac_vlan in there basically to elicit feedback.
> 
> Ok. Two points though:
> 
> - when you say that the mac address is included in the port-profile push,
>   does that imply that the VF does not have a mac address prior to this?
>   This would again mix the NIC configuration phase with the switch
>   association, which I think we really need to avoid if we want to be
>   able to implement the association in user space!
> 
> - The VLAN ID being implied in the port profile seems to be another
>   difference between what enic is doing and the current draft VDP
>   that will eventually become 802.1Qbg, and I fear that this difference
>   will be visible in the iovnl protocol.
> 
> > There really wouldn't be much different between iplink and iovnl since
> > they're both rtnetlink...seems we should keep IOV-related APIs in one place.
> > Maybe there are other IOV APIs to add to iovnl in the future like:
> > 
> >     vf <- add_vf(pf)
> >     del_vf(pf, vf)
> > 
> > Ethtool doesn't seem the right place for this.
> 
> Right. My preference would probably be make these a subcategory of
> the if_link, and use the existing RTM_NEWLINK/RTM_DELLINK commands.
> This would make it resemble the existing interfaces and mean you can
> use
> 
> ip link add link eth0 type macvlan    # for a container
> ip link add link eth0 type macvtap    # for qemu/vhost
> ip link add link eth0 type vf         # for device assignment

BTW, what do you mean by device assignment?

> There are obviously significant differences between these three, but
> they also share enough of their properties to let us treat them
> in similar ways.
> 
> If we integrate the iovnl client into iproute2, the sequence for setting
> up an enic VF and associating it to the port profile could be
> 
> # create vf0, pass mac and vlan id to HW, no association yet
> ip link add link eth0 name vf0 type vf mac fe:dc:ba:12:34:56 vlan 78

Just to clarify...right now, the normal SR-IOV VF is already there.
And, or course, can have its mac addr/vlan set already.

> # associate vf with port profile, mac address must match the one assigned
> #  to the interface before.
> ip iov assoc eth0 port-profile "general" host-uuid "dcf2a873-f5ee-41dd-a7ad-802a544e48c2" \
> 	 mac fe:dc:ba:12:34:56

At that point you could just do s/mac fe:.*/link vf0/

thanks,
-chris