[xdp-hints] Re: [RFC bpf-next 0/5] xdp: hints via kfuncs

[Jesper Dangaard Brouer <jbrouer@redhat.com>]

On 01/11/2022 18.05, Martin KaFai Lau wrote:
> On 10/31/22 6:59 PM, Stanislav Fomichev wrote:
>> On Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 3:57 PM Martin KaFai Lau 
>> <martin.lau@linux.dev> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 10/31/22 10:00 AM, Stanislav Fomichev wrote:
>>>>> 2. AF_XDP programs won't be able to access the metadata without 
>>>>> using a
>>>>> custom XDP program that calls the kfuncs and puts the data into the
>>>>> metadata area. We could solve this with some code in libxdp, 
>>>>> though; if
>>>>> this code can be made generic enough (so it just dumps the available
>>>>> metadata functions from the running kernel at load time), it may be
>>>>> possible to make it generic enough that it will be forward-compatible
>>>>> with new versions of the kernel that add new fields, which should
>>>>> alleviate Florian's concern about keeping things in sync.
>>>>
>>>> Good point. I had to convert to a custom program to use the kfuncs :-(
>>>> But your suggestion sounds good; maybe libxdp can accept some extra
>>>> info about at which offset the user would like to place the metadata
>>>> and the library can generate the required bytecode?
>>>>
>>>>> 3. It will make it harder to consume the metadata when building 
>>>>> SKBs. I
>>>>> think the CPUMAP and veth use cases are also quite important, and that
>>>>> we want metadata to be available for building SKBs in this path. Maybe
>>>>> this can be resolved by having a convenient kfunc for this that can be
>>>>> used for programs doing such redirects. E.g., you could just call
>>>>> xdp_copy_metadata_for_skb() before doing the bpf_redirect, and that
>>>>> would recursively expand into all the kfunc calls needed to extract 
>>>>> the
>>>>> metadata supported by the SKB path?
>>>>
>>>> So this xdp_copy_metadata_for_skb will create a metadata layout that
>>>
>>> Can the xdp_copy_metadata_for_skb be written as a bpf prog itself?
>>> Not sure where is the best point to specify this prog though.  
>>> Somehow during
>>> bpf_xdp_redirect_map?
>>> or this prog belongs to the target cpumap and the xdp prog 
>>> redirecting to this
>>> cpumap has to write the meta layout in a way that the cpumap is 
>>> expecting?
>>
>> We're probably interested in triggering it from the places where xdp
>> frames can eventually be converted into skbs?
>> So for plain 'return XDP_PASS' and things like bpf_redirect/etc? (IOW,
>> anything that's not XDP_DROP / AF_XDP redirect).
>> We can probably make it magically work, and can generate
>> kernel-digestible metadata whenever data == data_meta, but the
>> question - should we?
>> (need to make sure we won't regress any existing cases that are not
>> relying on the metadata)
> 
> Instead of having some kernel-digestible meta data, how about calling 
> another bpf prog to initialize the skb fields from the meta area after 
> __xdp_build_skb_from_frame() in the cpumap, so 
> run_xdp_set_skb_fileds_from_metadata() may be a better name.
> 

I very much like this idea of calling another bpf prog to initialize the
SKB fields from the meta area. (As a reminder, data need to come from
meta area, because at this point the hardware RX-desc is out-of-scope).
I'm onboard with xdp_copy_metadata_for_skb() populating the meta area.

We could invoke this BPF-prog inside __xdp_build_skb_from_frame().

We might need a new BPF_PROG_TYPE_XDP2SKB as this new BPF-prog
run_xdp_set_skb_fields_from_metadata() would need both xdp_buff + SKB as
context inputs. Right?  (Not sure, if this is acceptable with the BPF
maintainers new rules)

> The xdp_prog@rx sets the meta data and then redirect.  If the 
> xdp_prog@rx can also specify a xdp prog to initialize the skb fields 
> from the meta area, then there is no need to have a kfunc to enforce a 
> kernel-digestible layout.  Not sure what is a good way to specify this 
> xdp_prog though...

The challenge of running this (BPF_PROG_TYPE_XDP2SKB) BPF-prog inside
__xdp_build_skb_from_frame() is that it need to know howto decode the
meta area for every device driver or XDP-prog populating this (as veth
and cpumap can get redirected packets from multiple device drivers).
Sure, using a common function/helper/macro like
xdp_copy_metadata_for_skb() could help reduce this multiplexing, but we
want to have maximum flexibility to extend this without having to update
the kernel, right.

Fortunately __xdp_build_skb_from_frame() have a net_device parameter,
that points to the device is was received on (xdp_frame->dev_rx).
Thus, we could extend net_device and add this BPF-prog on a per
net_device basis.  This could function as a driver BPF-prog callback
that populates the SKB fields from the XDP meta data.
Is this a good or bad idea?


>>>> the kernel will be able to understand when converting back to skb?
>>>> IIUC, the xdp program will look something like the following:
>>>>
>>>> if (xdp packet is to be consumed by af_xdp) {
>>>>     // do a bunch of bpf_xdp_metadata_<metadata> calls and assemble 
>>>> your
>>>> own metadata layout
>>>>     return bpf_redirect_map(xsk, ...);
>>>> } else {
>>>>     // if the packet is to be consumed by the kernel
>>>>     xdp_copy_metadata_for_skb(ctx);
>>>>     return bpf_redirect(...);
>>>> }
>>>>
>>>> Sounds like a great suggestion! xdp_copy_metadata_for_skb can maybe
>>>> put some magic number in the first byte(s) of the metadata so the
>>>> kernel can check whether xdp_copy_metadata_for_skb has been called
>>>> previously (or maybe xdp_frame can carry this extra signal, idk).

I'm in favor of adding a flag bit to xdp_frame to signal this.
In __xdp_build_skb_from_frame() we could check this flag signal and then
invoke the BPF-prog type BPF_PROG_TYPE_XDP2SKB.

--Jesper