Re: [PATCH net-next 2/2] geneve: break dependency to network drivers

On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 10:48 AM, Hannes Frederic Sowa
[off-list ref] wrote:

On 06.01.2016 19:00, Jesse Gross wrote:

quoted

On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 7:41 AM, Hannes Frederic Sowa
[off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

diff --git a/drivers/net/geneve.c b/drivers/net/geneve.c
index 24b077a32c1c9c..548925d1571cb1 100644
--- a/drivers/net/geneve.c
+++ b/drivers/net/geneve.c
+static int geneve_notifier(struct notifier_block *unused,
+                          unsigned long event, void *ptr)
+{
+       struct net_device *dev = netdev_notifier_info_to_dev(ptr);
+
+       switch (event) {
+       case NETDEV_REFRESH_OFFLOAD_VXLAN:
+               geneve_notify_refresh_netdev(dev);

Presumably this should be NETDEV_REFRESH_OFFLOAD_GENEVE, not VXLAN.
However, rather than having a notifier for each protocol, it seems
like it might be cleaner to just have a single one that triggers for
all protocols and drivers that don't have the corresponding NDO
wouldn't get called, similar to what happens when the port gets added
in the first place.

Ah, thanks for noticing the typo.

The reason why I went with several types is that I didn't want to change the
behavior and wasn't sure if driver tested with reoccurring offload refreshes
to the driver. What you described was my first patch but because I couldn't
see if that works for all drivers I went this way.

Hmm, I see what you mean but I think it should be safe. All drivers
that have both Geneve and VXLAN offloads make calls to refresh them
back to back, which is a pattern that I would expect to continue. In
that case, having a single notifier that triggers multiple protocols
would have the same effect and is simpler.

quoted

quoted

diff --git a/include/net/geneve.h b/include/net/geneve.h
index e6c23dc765f7ec..36245115143652 100644
--- a/include/net/geneve.h
+++ b/include/net/geneve.h

[...]

quoted

  static inline void geneve_get_rx_port(struct net_device *netdev)
  {
+       call_netdevice_notifiers(NETDEV_REFRESH_OFFLOAD_GENEVE, netdev);
  }

Unfortunately, I don't think that we can assume that RTNL is held
here. It actually is for the drivers that implement Geneve at this
point but not in all cases for VXLAN. For example, ixgbe refreshes the
offloads in a service task in addition to when it is opened. There's
only a couple instances of things like this, so I guess it's probably
not too hard to through and make sure that we hold RTNL in those
cases.

Hmm, I am tempted to switch over to the netevent atomic notifier chain and
install those events there. It does not need rtnl lock at all, so we can
preserve the current semantics. What do you think?

I think that holding RTNL while we do these updates is actually the
right thing to do. The current situation of having calls from
different protocols protected by different locks is not really a great
model given that at the driver level these are usually shared data
structures. RTNL is already held in the majority of cases already, so
I think it is better to just convert the rest.