aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/Documentation
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorFlorian Westphal <fw@strlen.de>2016-02-18 15:03:24 +0100
committerGreg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>2017-03-22 12:04:13 +0100
commit0c0be310ba29e4a053e8aac934aebe590c5da909 (patch)
tree42c6e2597ad1a4b719af2113cc9dea6f9dd1ea22 /Documentation
parent28ec98bc2e4a175b60f45d505e715a33b93dd077 (diff)
netlink: remove mmapped netlink support
commit d1b4c689d4130bcfd3532680b64db562300716b6 upstream. mmapped netlink has a number of unresolved issues: - TX zerocopy support had to be disabled more than a year ago via commit 4682a0358639b29cf ("netlink: Always copy on mmap TX.") because the content of the mmapped area can change after netlink attribute validation but before message processing. - RX support was implemented mainly to speed up nfqueue dumping packet payload to userspace. However, since commit ae08ce0021087a5d812d2 ("netfilter: nfnetlink_queue: zero copy support") we avoid one copy with the socket-based interface too (via the skb_zerocopy helper). The other problem is that skbs attached to mmaped netlink socket behave different from normal skbs: - they don't have a shinfo area, so all functions that use skb_shinfo() (e.g. skb_clone) cannot be used. - reserving headroom prevents userspace from seeing the content as it expects message to start at skb->head. See for instance commit aa3a022094fa ("netlink: not trim skb for mmaped socket when dump"). - skbs handed e.g. to netlink_ack must have non-NULL skb->sk, else we crash because it needs the sk to check if a tx ring is attached. Also not obvious, leads to non-intuitive bug fixes such as 7c7bdf359 ("netfilter: nfnetlink: use original skbuff when acking batches"). mmaped netlink also didn't play nicely with the skb_zerocopy helper used by nfqueue and openvswitch. Daniel Borkmann fixed this via commit 6bb0fef489f6 ("netlink, mmap: fix edge-case leakages in nf queue zero-copy")' but at the cost of also needing to provide remaining length to the allocation function. nfqueue also has problems when used with mmaped rx netlink: - mmaped netlink doesn't allow use of nfqueue batch verdict messages. Problem is that in the mmap case, the allocation time also determines the ordering in which the frame will be seen by userspace (A allocating before B means that A is located in earlier ring slot, but this also means that B might get a lower sequence number then A since seqno is decided later. To fix this we would need to extend the spinlocked region to also cover the allocation and message setup which isn't desirable. - nfqueue can now be configured to queue large (GSO) skbs to userspace. Queing GSO packets is faster than having to force a software segmentation in the kernel, so this is a desirable option. However, with a mmap based ring one has to use 64kb per ring slot element, else mmap has to fall back to the socket path (NL_MMAP_STATUS_COPY) for all large packets. To use the mmap interface, userspace not only has to probe for mmap netlink support, it also has to implement a recv/socket receive path in order to handle messages that exceed the size of an rx ring element. Cc: Daniel Borkmann <daniel@iogearbox.net> Cc: Ken-ichirou MATSUZAWA <chamaken@gmail.com> Cc: Pablo Neira Ayuso <pablo@netfilter.org> Cc: Patrick McHardy <kaber@trash.net> Cc: Thomas Graf <tgraf@suug.ch> Signed-off-by: Florian Westphal <fw@strlen.de> Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net> Cc: Shi Yuejie <shiyuejie@outlook.com> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/networking/netlink_mmap.txt332
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 332 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/networking/netlink_mmap.txt b/Documentation/networking/netlink_mmap.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index 54f10478e8e3..000000000000
--- a/Documentation/networking/netlink_mmap.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,332 +0,0 @@
-This file documents how to use memory mapped I/O with netlink.
-
-Author: Patrick McHardy <kaber@trash.net>
-
-Overview
---------
-
-Memory mapped netlink I/O can be used to increase throughput and decrease
-overhead of unicast receive and transmit operations. Some netlink subsystems
-require high throughput, these are mainly the netfilter subsystems
-nfnetlink_queue and nfnetlink_log, but it can also help speed up large
-dump operations of f.i. the routing database.
-
-Memory mapped netlink I/O used two circular ring buffers for RX and TX which
-are mapped into the processes address space.
-
-The RX ring is used by the kernel to directly construct netlink messages into
-user-space memory without copying them as done with regular socket I/O,
-additionally as long as the ring contains messages no recvmsg() or poll()
-syscalls have to be issued by user-space to get more message.
-
-The TX ring is used to process messages directly from user-space memory, the
-kernel processes all messages contained in the ring using a single sendmsg()
-call.
-
-Usage overview
---------------
-
-In order to use memory mapped netlink I/O, user-space needs three main changes:
-
-- ring setup
-- conversion of the RX path to get messages from the ring instead of recvmsg()
-- conversion of the TX path to construct messages into the ring
-
-Ring setup is done using setsockopt() to provide the ring parameters to the
-kernel, then a call to mmap() to map the ring into the processes address space:
-
-- setsockopt(fd, SOL_NETLINK, NETLINK_RX_RING, &params, sizeof(params));
-- setsockopt(fd, SOL_NETLINK, NETLINK_TX_RING, &params, sizeof(params));
-- ring = mmap(NULL, size, PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, fd, 0)
-
-Usage of either ring is optional, but even if only the RX ring is used the
-mapping still needs to be writable in order to update the frame status after
-processing.
-
-Conversion of the reception path involves calling poll() on the file
-descriptor, once the socket is readable the frames from the ring are
-processed in order until no more messages are available, as indicated by
-a status word in the frame header.
-
-On kernel side, in order to make use of memory mapped I/O on receive, the
-originating netlink subsystem needs to support memory mapped I/O, otherwise
-it will use an allocated socket buffer as usual and the contents will be
- copied to the ring on transmission, nullifying most of the performance gains.
-Dumps of kernel databases automatically support memory mapped I/O.
-
-Conversion of the transmit path involves changing message construction to
-use memory from the TX ring instead of (usually) a buffer declared on the
-stack and setting up the frame header appropriately. Optionally poll() can
-be used to wait for free frames in the TX ring.
-
-Structured and definitions for using memory mapped I/O are contained in
-<linux/netlink.h>.
-
-RX and TX rings
-----------------
-
-Each ring contains a number of continuous memory blocks, containing frames of
-fixed size dependent on the parameters used for ring setup.
-
-Ring: [ block 0 ]
- [ frame 0 ]
- [ frame 1 ]
- [ block 1 ]
- [ frame 2 ]
- [ frame 3 ]
- ...
- [ block n ]
- [ frame 2 * n ]
- [ frame 2 * n + 1 ]
-
-The blocks are only visible to the kernel, from the point of view of user-space
-the ring just contains the frames in a continuous memory zone.
-
-The ring parameters used for setting up the ring are defined as follows:
-
-struct nl_mmap_req {
- unsigned int nm_block_size;
- unsigned int nm_block_nr;
- unsigned int nm_frame_size;
- unsigned int nm_frame_nr;
-};
-
-Frames are grouped into blocks, where each block is a continuous region of memory
-and holds nm_block_size / nm_frame_size frames. The total number of frames in
-the ring is nm_frame_nr. The following invariants hold:
-
-- frames_per_block = nm_block_size / nm_frame_size
-
-- nm_frame_nr = frames_per_block * nm_block_nr
-
-Some parameters are constrained, specifically:
-
-- nm_block_size must be a multiple of the architectures memory page size.
- The getpagesize() function can be used to get the page size.
-
-- nm_frame_size must be equal or larger to NL_MMAP_HDRLEN, IOW a frame must be
- able to hold at least the frame header
-
-- nm_frame_size must be smaller or equal to nm_block_size
-
-- nm_frame_size must be a multiple of NL_MMAP_MSG_ALIGNMENT
-
-- nm_frame_nr must equal the actual number of frames as specified above.
-
-When the kernel can't allocate physically continuous memory for a ring block,
-it will fall back to use physically discontinuous memory. This might affect
-performance negatively, in order to avoid this the nm_frame_size parameter
-should be chosen to be as small as possible for the required frame size and
-the number of blocks should be increased instead.
-
-Ring frames
-------------
-
-Each frames contain a frame header, consisting of a synchronization word and some
-meta-data, and the message itself.
-
-Frame: [ header message ]
-
-The frame header is defined as follows:
-
-struct nl_mmap_hdr {
- unsigned int nm_status;
- unsigned int nm_len;
- __u32 nm_group;
- /* credentials */
- __u32 nm_pid;
- __u32 nm_uid;
- __u32 nm_gid;
-};
-
-- nm_status is used for synchronizing processing between the kernel and user-
- space and specifies ownership of the frame as well as the operation to perform
-
-- nm_len contains the length of the message contained in the data area
-
-- nm_group specified the destination multicast group of message
-
-- nm_pid, nm_uid and nm_gid contain the netlink pid, UID and GID of the sending
- process. These values correspond to the data available using SOCK_PASSCRED in
- the SCM_CREDENTIALS cmsg.
-
-The possible values in the status word are:
-
-- NL_MMAP_STATUS_UNUSED:
- RX ring: frame belongs to the kernel and contains no message
- for user-space. Approriate action is to invoke poll()
- to wait for new messages.
-
- TX ring: frame belongs to user-space and can be used for
- message construction.
-
-- NL_MMAP_STATUS_RESERVED:
- RX ring only: frame is currently used by the kernel for message
- construction and contains no valid message yet.
- Appropriate action is to invoke poll() to wait for
- new messages.
-
-- NL_MMAP_STATUS_VALID:
- RX ring: frame contains a valid message. Approriate action is
- to process the message and release the frame back to
- the kernel by setting the status to
- NL_MMAP_STATUS_UNUSED or queue the frame by setting the
- status to NL_MMAP_STATUS_SKIP.
-
- TX ring: the frame contains a valid message from user-space to
- be processed by the kernel. After completing processing
- the kernel will release the frame back to user-space by
- setting the status to NL_MMAP_STATUS_UNUSED.
-
-- NL_MMAP_STATUS_COPY:
- RX ring only: a message is ready to be processed but could not be
- stored in the ring, either because it exceeded the
- frame size or because the originating subsystem does
- not support memory mapped I/O. Appropriate action is
- to invoke recvmsg() to receive the message and release
- the frame back to the kernel by setting the status to
- NL_MMAP_STATUS_UNUSED.
-
-- NL_MMAP_STATUS_SKIP:
- RX ring only: user-space queued the message for later processing, but
- processed some messages following it in the ring. The
- kernel should skip this frame when looking for unused
- frames.
-
-The data area of a frame begins at a offset of NL_MMAP_HDRLEN relative to the
-frame header.
-
-TX limitations
---------------
-
-As of Jan 2015 the message is always copied from the ring frame to an
-allocated buffer due to unresolved security concerns.
-See commit 4682a0358639b29cf ("netlink: Always copy on mmap TX.").
-
-Example
--------
-
-Ring setup:
-
- unsigned int block_size = 16 * getpagesize();
- struct nl_mmap_req req = {
- .nm_block_size = block_size,
- .nm_block_nr = 64,
- .nm_frame_size = 16384,
- .nm_frame_nr = 64 * block_size / 16384,
- };
- unsigned int ring_size;
- void *rx_ring, *tx_ring;
-
- /* Configure ring parameters */
- if (setsockopt(fd, SOL_NETLINK, NETLINK_RX_RING, &req, sizeof(req)) < 0)
- exit(1);
- if (setsockopt(fd, SOL_NETLINK, NETLINK_TX_RING, &req, sizeof(req)) < 0)
- exit(1)
-
- /* Calculate size of each individual ring */
- ring_size = req.nm_block_nr * req.nm_block_size;
-
- /* Map RX/TX rings. The TX ring is located after the RX ring */
- rx_ring = mmap(NULL, 2 * ring_size, PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE,
- MAP_SHARED, fd, 0);
- if ((long)rx_ring == -1L)
- exit(1);
- tx_ring = rx_ring + ring_size:
-
-Message reception:
-
-This example assumes some ring parameters of the ring setup are available.
-
- unsigned int frame_offset = 0;
- struct nl_mmap_hdr *hdr;
- struct nlmsghdr *nlh;
- unsigned char buf[16384];
- ssize_t len;
-
- while (1) {
- struct pollfd pfds[1];
-
- pfds[0].fd = fd;
- pfds[0].events = POLLIN | POLLERR;
- pfds[0].revents = 0;
-
- if (poll(pfds, 1, -1) < 0 && errno != -EINTR)
- exit(1);
-
- /* Check for errors. Error handling omitted */
- if (pfds[0].revents & POLLERR)
- <handle error>
-
- /* If no new messages, poll again */
- if (!(pfds[0].revents & POLLIN))
- continue;
-
- /* Process all frames */
- while (1) {
- /* Get next frame header */
- hdr = rx_ring + frame_offset;
-
- if (hdr->nm_status == NL_MMAP_STATUS_VALID) {
- /* Regular memory mapped frame */
- nlh = (void *)hdr + NL_MMAP_HDRLEN;
- len = hdr->nm_len;
-
- /* Release empty message immediately. May happen
- * on error during message construction.
- */
- if (len == 0)
- goto release;
- } else if (hdr->nm_status == NL_MMAP_STATUS_COPY) {
- /* Frame queued to socket receive queue */
- len = recv(fd, buf, sizeof(buf), MSG_DONTWAIT);
- if (len <= 0)
- break;
- nlh = buf;
- } else
- /* No more messages to process, continue polling */
- break;
-
- process_msg(nlh);
-release:
- /* Release frame back to the kernel */
- hdr->nm_status = NL_MMAP_STATUS_UNUSED;
-
- /* Advance frame offset to next frame */
- frame_offset = (frame_offset + frame_size) % ring_size;
- }
- }
-
-Message transmission:
-
-This example assumes some ring parameters of the ring setup are available.
-A single message is constructed and transmitted, to send multiple messages
-at once they would be constructed in consecutive frames before a final call
-to sendto().
-
- unsigned int frame_offset = 0;
- struct nl_mmap_hdr *hdr;
- struct nlmsghdr *nlh;
- struct sockaddr_nl addr = {
- .nl_family = AF_NETLINK,
- };
-
- hdr = tx_ring + frame_offset;
- if (hdr->nm_status != NL_MMAP_STATUS_UNUSED)
- /* No frame available. Use poll() to avoid. */
- exit(1);
-
- nlh = (void *)hdr + NL_MMAP_HDRLEN;
-
- /* Build message */
- build_message(nlh);
-
- /* Fill frame header: length and status need to be set */
- hdr->nm_len = nlh->nlmsg_len;
- hdr->nm_status = NL_MMAP_STATUS_VALID;
-
- if (sendto(fd, NULL, 0, 0, &addr, sizeof(addr)) < 0)
- exit(1);
-
- /* Advance frame offset to next frame */
- frame_offset = (frame_offset + frame_size) % ring_size;