Port attributes configuration

Port attributes configuration

[Marco Varlese]

I'm working on a new platform and the network interfaces will have
quite few new options (roughly 50) to configure. What I definitely
want to achieve is to use the common tools available on Linux to let
users configure the port attributes from user-space without writing a
brand new ad-hoc tool.

Considered my requirements I think I've a choice of configuring these
port attributes via:
1) ethtool: this I guess will require patches to the tool itself plus
patches to the kernel to extend the IOCTL calls performed by it;
2) sysfs: adding new files under /sys/class/net/DEVICE/ and handle the
sysfs extensions in my kernel driver;
3) netlink: I understand this seems to be the path most people prefer
but I think it will require a new tool to be written?

What would you suggest as the best approach here to have a good
solution accepted by most?


Thanks,
Marco

Re: Port attributes configuration

[John Fastabend]

On 07/29/2014 02:15 AM, Marco Varlese wrote:
> I'm working on a new platform and the network interfaces will have
> quite few new options (roughly 50) to configure. What I definitely
> want to achieve is to use the common tools available on Linux to let
> users configure the port attributes from user-space without writing a
> brand new ad-hoc tool.

Its hard to say without knowing what the attributes are and how many
of them are new.

>
> Considered my requirements I think I've a choice of configuring these
> port attributes via:
> 1) ethtool: this I guess will require patches to the tool itself plus
> patches to the kernel to extend the IOCTL calls performed by it;

Many devices already expose many statistics via ethtool -S and features
via ethtool -k. Depending on the attribute it may make sense to add
it here.

> 2) sysfs: adding new files under /sys/class/net/DEVICE/ and handle the
> sysfs extensions in my kernel driver;

Typically most these are read only options. Without knowing your options
I would guess this is the least likely.

> 3) netlink: I understand this seems to be the path most people prefer
> but I think it will require a new tool to be written?
>

Writing a new tool is not necessarily a bad thing IMO but again need
more details what type of options.

> What would you suggest as the best approach here to have a good
> solution accepted by most?

more details.

>
>
> Thanks,
> Marco
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-- 
John Fastabend         Intel Corporation

Re: Port attributes configuration

[Cong Wang]

On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 2:15 AM, Marco Varlese <marco.varlese@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm working on a new platform and the network interfaces will have
> quite few new options (roughly 50) to configure. What I definitely
> want to achieve is to use the common tools available on Linux to let
> users configure the port attributes from user-space without writing a
> brand new ad-hoc tool.
>

Netlink is definitely preferred unless you have a reason not to use it.
You don't give any details so I can't tell much.

You probably don't have to write a new tool from scratch, i.e. parsing
netlink attributes all by yourself, you probably can just patch existing
iproute2.