Jesper Dangaard Brouer [off-list ref] writes:

The AF_XDP userspace part of xdp_hw_metadata see non-zero as a signal of
the availability of rx_timestamp and rx_hash in data_meta area. The
kernel-side BPF-prog code doesn't initialize these members when kernel
returns an error e.g. -EOPNOTSUPP.  This memory area is not guaranteed to
be zeroed, and can contain garbage/previous values, which will be read
and interpreted by AF_XDP userspace side.

Tested this on different drivers. The experiences are that for most
packets they will have zeroed this data_meta area, but occasionally it
will contain garbage data.

Example of failure tested on ixgbe:
 poll: 1 (0)
 xsk_ring_cons__peek: 1
 0x18ec788: rx_desc[0]->addr=100000000008000 addr=8100 comp_addr=8000
 rx_hash: 3697961069
 rx_timestamp:  9024981991734834796 (sec:9024981991.7348)
 0x18ec788: complete idx=8 addr=8000

Converting to date:
 date -d @9024981991
 2255-12-28T20:26:31 CET

I choose a simple fix in this patch. When kfunc fails or isn't supported
assign zero to the corresponding struct meta value.

It's up to the individual BPF-programmer to do something smarter e.g.
that fits their use-case, like getting a software timestamp and marking
a flag that gives the type of timestamp.

Another possibility is for the behavior of kfunc's
bpf_xdp_metadata_rx_timestamp and bpf_xdp_metadata_rx_hash to require
clearing return value pointer.

I definitely think we should leave it up to the BPF programmer to react
to failures; that's what the return code is there for, after all :)

-Toke