On Tue, Mar 8, 2022 at 5:40 AM Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <toke@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Kumar Kartikeya Dwivedi <memxor@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> > On Tue, Mar 08, 2022 at 11:18:52AM IST, Andrii Nakryiko wrote:
> >> On Sun, Mar 6, 2022 at 3:43 PM Kumar Kartikeya Dwivedi <memxor@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Expose existing 'bpf_xdp_pointer' as a BPF helper named 'bpf_packet_pointer'
> >> > returning a packet pointer with a fixed immutable range. This can be useful to
> >> > enable DPA without having to use memcpy (currently the case in
> >> > bpf_xdp_load_bytes and bpf_xdp_store_bytes).
> >> >
> >> > The intended usage to read and write data for multi-buff XDP is:
> >> >
> >> > int err = 0;
> >> > char buf[N];
> >> >
> >> > off &= 0xffff;
> >> > ptr = bpf_packet_pointer(ctx, off, sizeof(buf), &err);
> >> > if (unlikely(!ptr)) {
> >> > if (err < 0)
> >> > return XDP_ABORTED;
> >> > err = bpf_xdp_load_bytes(ctx, off, buf, sizeof(buf));
> >> > if (err < 0)
> >> > return XDP_ABORTED;
> >> > ptr = buf;
> >> > }
> >> > ...
> >> > // Do some stores and loads in [ptr, ptr + N) region
> >> > ...
> >> > if (unlikely(ptr == buf)) {
> >> > err = bpf_xdp_store_bytes(ctx, off, buf, sizeof(buf));
> >> > if (err < 0)
> >> > return XDP_ABORTED;
> >> > }
> >> >
> >> > Note that bpf_packet_pointer returns a PTR_TO_PACKET, not PTR_TO_MEM, because
> >> > these pointers need to be invalidated on clear_all_pkt_pointers invocation, and
> >> > it is also more meaningful to the user to see return value as R0=pkt.
> >> >
> >> > This series is meant to collect feedback on the approach, next version can
> >> > include a bpf_skb_pointer and exposing it as bpf_packet_pointer helper for TC
> >> > hooks, and explore not resetting range to zero on r0 += rX, instead check access
> >> > like check_mem_region_access (var_off + off < range), since there would be no
> >> > data_end to compare against and obtain a new range.
> >> >
> >> > The common name and func_id is supposed to allow writing generic code using
> >> > bpf_packet_pointer that works for both XDP and TC programs.
> >> >
> >> > Please see the individual patches for implementation details.
> >> >
> >>
> >> Joanne is working on a "bpf_dynptr" framework that will support
> >> exactly this feature, in addition to working with dynamically
> >> allocated memory, working with memory of statically unknown size (but
> >> safe and checked at runtime), etc. And all that within a generic
> >> common feature implemented uniformly within the verifier. E.g., it
> >> won't need any of the custom bits of logic added in patch #2 and #3.
> >> So I'm thinking that instead of custom-implementing a partial case of
> >> bpf_dynptr just for skb and xdp packets, let's maybe wait for dynptr
> >> and do it only once there?
> >>
> >
> > Interesting stuff, looking forward to it.
> >
> >> See also my ARG_CONSTANT comment. It seems like a pretty common thing
> >> where input constant is used to characterize some pointer returned
> >> from the helper (e.g., bpf_ringbuf_reserve() case), and we'll need
> >> that for bpf_dynptr for exactly this "give me direct access of N
> >> bytes, if possible" case. So improving/generalizing it now before
> >> dynptr lands makes a lot of sense, outside of bpf_packet_pointer()
> >> feature itself.
> >
> > No worries, we can continue the discussion in patch 1, I'll split out the arg
> > changes into a separate patch, and wait for dynptr to be posted before reworking
> > this.
>
> This does raise the question of what we do in the meantime, though? Your
> patch includes a change to bpf_xdp_{load,store}_bytes() which, if we're
> making it, really has to go in before those hit a release and become
> UAPI.
>
> One option would be to still make the change to those other helpers;
> they'd become a bit slower, but if we have a solution for that coming,
> that may be OK for a single release? WDYT?
I must have missed important changes to bpf_xdp_{load,store}_bytes().
Does anything change about its behavior? If there are some fixes
specific to those helpers, we should fix them as well as a separate
patch. My main objection is adding a bpf_packet_pointer() special case
when we have a generic mechanism in the works that will come this use
case (among other use cases).
>
> -Toke
>
