Re: [PATCH v2 00/17] net: introduce Qualcomm IPA driver

[Dan Williams <dcbw@redhat.com>]

On Tue, 2019-06-11 at 13:56 +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 10:12 AM Johannes Berg
> <johannes@sipsolutions.net> wrote:
> 
> > > As I've made clear before, my work on this has been focused on
> > > the IPA transport,
> > > and some of this higher-level LTE architecture is new to me.  But
> > > it
> > > seems pretty clear that an abstracted WWAN subsystem is a good
> > > plan,
> > > because these devices represent a superset of what a "normal"
> > > netdev
> > > implements.
> > 
> > I'm not sure I'd actually call it a superset. By themselves, these
> > netdevs are actually completely useless to the network stack,
> > AFAICT.
> > Therefore, the overlap with netdevs you can really use with the
> > network
> > stack is pretty small?
> 
> I think Alex meant the concept of having a type of netdev with a
> generic
> user space interface for wwan and similar to a wlan device, as I
> understood
> you had suggested as well, as opposed to a stacked device as in
> rmnet or those drivers it seems to be modeled after (vlan, ip tunnel,
> ...)/.
> 
> > > HOWEVER I disagree with your suggestion that the IPA code should
> > > not be committed until after that is all sorted out.  In part
> > > it's
> > > for selfish reasons, but I think there are legitimate reasons to
> > > commit IPA now *knowing* that it will need to be adapted to fit
> > > into the generic model that gets defined and developed.  Here
> > > are some reasons why.
> > 
> > I can't really argue with those, though I would point out that the
> > converse also holds - if we commit to this now, then we will have
> > to
> > actually keep the API offered by IPA/rmnet today, so we cannot
> > actually
> > remove the netdev again, even if we do migrate it to offer support
> > for a
> > WWAN framework in the future.
> 
> Right. The interface to support rmnet might be simple enough to keep
> next to what becomes the generic interface, but it will always
> continue
> to be an annoyance.
> 
> > > Second, the IPA code has been out for review recently, and has
> > > been
> > > the subject of some detailed discussion in the past few
> > > weeks.  Arnd
> > > especially has invested considerable time in review and
> > > discussion.
> > > Delaying things until after a better generic model is settled on
> > > (which I'm guessing might be on the order of months)
> > 
> > I dunno if it really has to be months. I think we can cobble
> > something
> > together relatively quickly that addresses the needs of IPA more
> > specifically, and then extend later?
> > 
> > But OTOH it may make sense to take a more paced approach and think
> > about the details more carefully than we have over in the other
> > thread so far.
> 
> I would hope that as soon as we can agree on a general approach, it
> would also be possible to merge a minimal implementation into the
> kernel
> along with IPA. Alex already mentioned that IPA in its current state
> does
> not actually support more than one data channel, so the necessary
> setup for it becomes even simpler.
> 
> At the moment, the rmnet configuration in
> include/uapi/linux/if_link.h
> is almost trivial, with the three pieces of information needed being
> an IFLA_LINK to point to the real device (not needed if there is only
> one device per channel, instead of two), the IFLA_RMNET_MUX_ID
> setting the ID of the muxing channel (not needed if there is only
> one channel ?), a way to specify software bridging between channels
> (not useful if there is only one channel) and a few flags that I
> assume
> must match the remote end:
> 
> #define RMNET_FLAGS_INGRESS_DEAGGREGATION         (1U << 0)
> #define RMNET_FLAGS_INGRESS_MAP_COMMANDS          (1U << 1)
> #define RMNET_FLAGS_INGRESS_MAP_CKSUMV4           (1U << 2)
> #define RMNET_FLAGS_EGRESS_MAP_CKSUMV4            (1U << 3)
> enum {
>         IFLA_RMNET_UNSPEC,
>         IFLA_RMNET_MUX_ID,
>         IFLA_RMNET_FLAGS,
>         __IFLA_RMNET_MAX,
> };
> #define IFLA_RMNET_MAX  (__IFLA_RMNET_MAX - 1)
> struct ifla_rmnet_flags {
>         __u32   flags;
>         __u32   mask;
> };
> 
> > > Third, having the code upstream actually means the actual
> > > requirements
> > > for rmnet-over-IPA are clear and explicit.  This might not be a
> > > huge
> > > deal, but I think it's better to devise a generic WWAN scheme
> > > that
> > > can refer to actual code than to do so with assumptions about
> > > what
> > > will work with rmnet (and others).  As far as I know, the
> > > upstream
> > > rmnet has no other upstream back end; IPA will make it "real."
> > 
> > Is that really true? I had previously been told that rmnet actually
> > does
> > have use with a few existing drivers.
> > 
> > 
> > If true though, then I think this would be the killer argument *in
> > favour* of *not* merging this - because that would mean we *don't*
> > have
> > to actually keep the rmnet API around for all foreseeable future.
> 
> I would agree with that. From the code I can see no other driver
> including the rmnet protocol header (see the discussion about moving
> the header to include/linux in order to merge ipa), and I don't see
> any other driver referencing ETH_P_MAP either. My understanding
> is that any driver used by rmnet would require both, but they are
> all out-of-tree at the moment.

The general plan (and I believe Daniele Palmas was working on it) was
to eventually make qmi_wwan use rmnet rather than its internal sysfs-
based implementation. qmi_wwan and ipa are at essentially the same
level and both could utilize rmnet on top.

*That's* what I'd like to see. I don't want to see two different ways
to get QMAP packets to modem firmware from two different drivers that
really could use the same code.

Dan


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