Florian Kauer <florian.kauer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> Hi,
> I am currently implementing an eBPF for redirecting from one physical interface to another. So basically loading the following at enp8s0:
>
> SEC("prog")
> int xdp_redirect(struct xdp_md *ctx) {
> /* ... */
> return bpf_redirect(3 /* enp5s0 */, 0);
> }
>
> I made three observations that I would like to discuss with you:
>
> 1. The redirection only works when I ALSO load some eBPF at the egress interface (enp5s0). It can be just
>
> SEC("prog")
> int xdp_pass(struct xdp_md *ctx) {
> return XDP_PASS;
> }
>
> but there has to be at least something. Otherwise, only xdp_redirect is called, but xdp_devmap_xmit is not.
> It seems somewhat reasonable that the interface where the traffic is redirected to also needs to have the
> XDP functionality initialized somehow, but it was unexpected at first. It tested it with an i225-IT (igc driver)
> and a 82576 (igb driver). So, is this a bug or a feature?
I personally consider it a bug, but all the Intel drivers work this way,
unfortunately. The was some discussion around making the XDP feature
bits read-write, making it possible to enable XDP via ethtool instead of
having to load a dummy XDP program. But no patches have materialised yet.
> 2. For the RX side, the metadata is documented as "XDP RX Metadata"
> (https://docs.kernel.org/networking/xdp-rx-metadata.html), while for
> TX it is "AF_XDP TX Metadata"
> (https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/next/networking/xsk-tx-metadata.html).
> That seems to imply that TX metadata only works for AF_XDP, but not
> for direct redirection. Is there a reason for that?
Well, IIRC, AF_XDP was the most pressing use case, and no one has gotten
around to extending this to the regular XDP forwarding path yet.
> 3. At least for the igc, the egress queue is currently selected by
> using the smp_processor_id.
> (https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/igc/igc_main.c?h=v6.8-rc4#n2453)
> For our application, I would like to define the queue on a per-packet
> basis via the eBPF. This would allow to steer the traffic to the
> correct queue when using TAPRIO full hardware offload. Do you see any
> problem with introducing a new metadata field to define the egress
> queue?
Well, a couple :)
1. We'd have to find agreement across drivers for a numbering scheme to
refer to queues.
2. Selecting queues based on CPU index the way its done now means we
guarantee that the same queue will only be served from one CPU. Which
means we don't have to do any locking, which helps tremendously with
performance. Drivers handle the case where there are more CPUs than
queues a bit differently, but the ones that do generally have a lock
(with associated performance overhead).
As a workaround, you can use a cpumap to steer packets to specific CPUs
and perform the egress redirect inside the cpumap instead of directly on
RX. Requires a bit of knowledge of the hardware configuration, but it
may be enough for what you're trying to do.
-Toke
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