Re: [PATCH net-next v9 3/4] virtio_net: Extend virtio to use VF datapath when available

[Jiri Pirko <jiri@resnulli.us>]

Wed, May 02, 2018 at 05:34:44PM CEST, sridhar.samudrala@intel.com wrote:
>On 5/2/2018 12:50 AM, Jiri Pirko wrote:
>> Wed, May 02, 2018 at 02:20:26AM CEST, sridhar.samudrala@intel.com wrote:
>> > On 4/30/2018 12:20 AM, Jiri Pirko wrote:
>> > > > > Now I try to change mac of the failover master:
>> > > > > [root@test1 ~]# ip link set ens3 addr 52:54:00:b2:a7:f3
>> > > > > RTNETLINK answers: Operation not supported
>> > > > > 
>> > > > > That I did expect to work. I would expect this would change the mac of
>> > > > > the master and both standby and primary slaves.
>> > > > If a VF is untrusted, a VM will not able to change its MAC and moreover
>> > > Note that at this point, I have no VF. So I'm not sure why you mention
>> > > that.
>> > > 
>> > > 
>> > > > in this mode we are assuming that the hypervisor has assigned the MAC and
>> > > > guest is not expected to change the MAC.
>> > > Wait, for ordinary old-fashioned virtio_net, as a VM user, I can change
>> > > mac and all works fine. How is this different? Change mac on "failover
>> > > instance" should work and should propagate the mac down to its slaves.
>> > > 
>> > > 
>> > > > For the initial implementation, i would propose not allowing the guest to
>> > > > change the MAC of failover or standby dev.
>> > > I see no reason for such restriction.
>> > > 
>> > It is true that a VM user can change mac address of a normal virtio-net interface,
>> > however when it is in STANDBY mode i think we should not allow this change specifically
>> > because we are creating a failover instance based on a MAC that is assigned by the
>> > hypervisor.
>> > 
>> > Moreover,  in a cloud environment i would think that PF/hypervisor assigns a MAC to
>> > the VF and it cannot be changed by the guest.
>> So that is easy. You allow the change of the mac and in the "failover"
>> mac change implementation you propagate the change down to slaves. If
>> one slave does not support the change, you bail out. And since VF does
>> not allow it as you say, once it will be enslaved, the mac change could
>> not be done. Seems like a correct behavior to me and is in-sync with how
>> bond/team behaves.
>
>If we allow the mac to be changed when the VF is not yet plugged in
>and the guest changes the mac, then VF cannot join the failover when
>it is hot plugged with the original mac assigned by the hypervisor.
>Specifically there could be timing window during the live migration where
>VF would be unplugged at the source and if we allow the guest to change the
>failover mac, then VF would not be able to register with the failover after
>the VM is migrated to the destination.

Okay. So as suggested by mst, just forbid the mac changes all together.


>
>> 
>> > So for the initial implementation, do you see any issues with having this restriction
>> > in STANDBY mode.
>> > 
>> > 
>