Re: [patch net-next v4 0/4] return offloaded stats as default and expose original sw stats

On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 7:54 AM, Jamal Hadi Salim [off-list ref] wrote:

On 16-06-17 10:05 AM, Jiri Pirko wrote:

quoted

Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 03:48:35PM CEST, dsa@cumulusnetworks.com wrote:

quoted

On 6/17/16 2:24 AM, Jiri Pirko wrote:

quoted

quoted

That is problematic. Existing apps depend on rtnetlink stats. But if we
don't count offloaded forwarded packets, the apps don't see anything.
Therefore I believe that this patchset approach is better. The existing
apps continue to work and future apps can use newly introduces sw_stats
to query slowpath traffic. Makes sense to me.

I agree with Jiri. It is a bad idea to depend on ethtool for any of
this stuff.

The concern should not be that it is an ethtool api.
In all previous discussions on this patchset and also my
stats api patches, i have indicated that we have to move all stats
in one place, so naturally, ethtool stats should move eventually to the
stats api as a new nested netlink attribute. I think i called it
IFLA_STATS_LINK_HW  (or something like that)...
and this nested attribute should provide the flexibility and extensibility
of the current ethtool stats api.

Is there a way we can tag netlink stats instead
to indicate they are hardware or software?
We already have a use case with the tc where someone could get/set
hardware and/or software.

cheers,
jamal