Re: [RFC net-next] net: xfrm: support setting an output mark.

[Steffen Klassert <steffen.klassert@secunet.com>]

On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 02:13:15AM +0900, Lorenzo Colitti wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 4:51 PM, Steffen Klassert
> <steffen.klassert@secunet.com> wrote:
> > I thought you can just split the 32 bit mark into two 16 bit marks
> > by setting an appropriate mask at the xfrm and the routing mark.
> > But this has the drawback that the socket needs to know how possibly
> > tunneled packets should be routed.
> 
> Right. And if those bits are already used for something else (e.g.,
> Android uses something like 20 bits for marks) then that's not
> possible.
> 
> Also - the other approach of using the SA mark for routing the
> tunneled packet, that has backwards compatibility issues. If someone
> is using mark-based routing, and has configured an SA with a mark,
> then making the mark influence the routing lookup would change how
> those tunnels are routed and possibly break them.

Right, good point.

> 
> > So we transform the packet and may 'transform' the mark on the packet
> > too. This could make sense, but we have to point out the differences
> > between the xfrm_mark and the output_mark on the SA very explicit.
> 
> Ack. Where should this be pointed out? I've sent out a non-RFC version
> to netdev, mostly unchanged but including a fair bit more rationale in
> the commit message:
> 
> https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/799891/
> 
> Or did you mean it should be be documented this in the ip-xfrm man page, or...?

A detailed commit message is what I meant, this could be also
the base for the manpage once iproute2 gets support for this.