Re: [PATCH net-next v2 00/11] devlink: Add support for region access

[Alex Vesker <valex@mellanox.com>]

On 7/11/2018 9:48 PM, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> CC: linux-wireless, wifi chips used to have similar problem
>
> On Wed, 11 Jul 2018 13:42:57 +0300, Alex Vesker wrote:
>> This is a proposal which will allow access to driver defined address
>> regions using devlink. Each device can create its supported address
>> regions and register them. A device which exposes a region will allow
>> access to it using devlink.
>>
>> The suggested implementation will allow exposing regions to the user,
>> reading and dumping snapshots taken from different regions.
>> A snapshot represents a memory image of a region taken by the driver.
>>
>> If a device collects a snapshot of an address region it can be later
>> exposed using devlink region read or dump commands.
>> This functionality allows for future analyses on the snapshots to be
>> done.
>>
>> The major benefit of this support is not only to provide access to
>> internal address regions which were inaccessible to the user but also
>> to provide an additional way to debug complex error states using the
>> region snapshots.
>>
>> Implemented commands:
>> $ devlink region help
>> $ devlink region show [ DEV/REGION ]
>> $ devlink region del DEV/REGION snapshot SNAPSHOT_ID
>> $ devlink region dump DEV/REGION [ snapshot SNAPSHOT_ID ]
>> $ devlink region read DEV/REGION [ snapshot SNAPSHOT_ID ]
>> 	address ADDRESS length length
> You got me excited with the read without snapshot but then you say below
> that it's future work :)
>
>> Show all of the exposed regions with region sizes:
>> $ devlink region show
>> pci/0000:00:05.0/cr-space: size 1048576 snapshot [1 2]
>> pci/0000:00:05.0/fw-health: size 64 snapshot [1 2]
>>
>> Delete a snapshot using:
>> $ devlink region del pci/0000:00:05.0/cr-space snapshot 1
>>
>> Dump a snapshot:
>> $ devlink region dump pci/0000:00:05.0/fw-health snapshot 1
>> 0000000000000000 0014 95dc 0014 9514 0035 1670 0034 db30
>> 0000000000000010 0000 0000 ffff ff04 0029 8c00 0028 8cc8
>> 0000000000000020 0016 0bb8 0016 1720 0000 0000 c00f 3ffc
>> 0000000000000030 bada cce5 bada cce5 bada cce5 bada cce5
>>
>> Read a specific part of a snapshot:
>> $ devlink region read pci/0000:00:05.0/fw-health snapshot 1 address 0
>> 	length 16
>> 0000000000000000 0014 95dc 0014 9514 0035 1670 0034 db30
>>
>> For more information you can check devlink-region.8 man page
>>
>> Future:
>> There is a plan to extend the support to include a write command
>> as well as performing read and dump live region
> Reading live region would be very interesting and alleviate the need
> for complicated ethtool dump marshalling a number of drivers started
> doing (incl. nfp).  Any plans on that?
Yes I plan to also support read of live regions.
Unlike ethtool which works per netdevice this will allow access per PCI 
device,
this allows reading region/dump on IPoIB ULP for example, which
cannot implement a vendor specific dump using ethtool.
> Write support I'm less excited about :)