Re: [PATCH net-next] net/sched: cls_flower: Add user specified data

[Simon Horman <simon.horman@netronome.com>]

On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 01:45:28PM +0200, Paul Blakey wrote:
> On 04/01/2017 12:14, Simon Horman wrote:
> >On Tue, Jan 03, 2017 at 02:22:05PM +0200, Paul Blakey wrote:
> >>
> >>On 03/01/2017 13:44, Jamal Hadi Salim wrote:
> >>>On 17-01-02 11:33 PM, John Fastabend wrote:
> >>>>On 17-01-02 05:22 PM, Jamal Hadi Salim wrote:
> >>>[..]
> >>>>>Like all cookie semantics it is for storing state. The receiver
> >>>>>(kernel)
> >>>>>is not just store it and not intepret it. The user when reading it back
> >>>>>simplifies what they have to do for their processing.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>The tuple <ifindex:qdisc:prio:handle> really should be unique why
> >>>>>>not use this for system wide mappings?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>I think on a single machine should be enough, however:
> >>>>>typically the user wants to define the value in a manner that
> >>>>>in a distributed system it is unique. It would be trickier to
> >>>>>do so with well defined values such as above.
> >>>>>
> >>>>Just extend the tuple <hostname:ifindex:qdisc:prio:handle> that
> >>>>should be unique in the domain of hostname's, or use some other domain
> >>>>wide machine identifier.
> >>>>
> >>>May work for the case of filter identification. The nice thing for
> >>>allowing cookies is you can let the user define it define their
> >>>own scheme.
> >>>
> >>>>Although actions can be shared so the cookie can be shared across
> >>>>filters. Maybe its useful but it doesn't uniquely identify a filter
> >>>>in the shared case but the user would have to specify that case
> >>>>so maybe its not important.
> >>>>
> >>>Note: the action cookies and filter cookies are unrelated/orthogonal.
> >>>Their basic concept of stashing something in the cookie to help improve
> >>>what user space does (in our case millions of actions of which some are
> >>>used for accounting) is similar.
> >>>I have no objections to the flow cookies; my main concern was it should
> >>>be applicable to all classifiers not just flower. And the arbitrary size
> >>>of the cookie that you pointed out is questionable.
> >>>
> >>>cheers,
> >>>jamal
> >>
> >>Hi all,
> >>Our use case is replacing OVS rules with TC filters for HW offload, and
> >>you're are right the cookie would
> >>have saved us the mapping from OVS rule ufid to the tc filter handle/prio...
> >>that was generated for it.
> >>It also was going to be used to store other info like which OVS output port
> >>corresponds to the ifindex,
> >Possibly off-topic but I am curious to know why you need to store the port.
> >My possibly naïve assumption is that a filter is attached to the netdev
> >corresponding to the input port and mirred or other actions are used to output
> >to netdevs corresponding to output ports.
> 
> Right, its for the output ports, OVS uses ovs port numbers and mirred action
> uses the device ifindex, so there is need
> to translate it back to OVS port on dump.

Understood, that is a tedious abstraction to support.
But I don't see an easy way around it at this time.

If I read Jamal's emails correctly he is working on per-action cookies.
They may be better than per-flow cookies for storing the OvS port number
(though not the UUID of the flow).

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