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net: openvswitch: allow providing upcall pid for the 'execute' command

When a packet enters OVS datapath and there is no flow to handle it, packet goes to userspace through a MISS upcall. With per-CPU upcall dispatch mechanism, we're using the current CPU id to select the Netlink PID on which to send this packet. This allows us to send packets from the same traffic flow through the same handler. The handler will process the packet, install required flow into the kernel and re-inject the original packet via OVS_PACKET_CMD_EXECUTE. While handling OVS_PACKET_CMD_EXECUTE, however, we may hit a recirculation action that will pass the (likely modified) packet through the flow lookup again. And if the flow is not found, the packet will be sent to userspace again through another MISS upcall. However, the handler thread in userspace is likely running on a different CPU core, and the OVS_PACKET_CMD_EXECUTE request is handled in the syscall context of that thread. So, when the time comes to send the packet through another upcall, the per-CPU dispatch will choose a different Netlink PID, and this packet will end up processed by a different handler thread on a different CPU. The process continues as long as there are new recirculations, each time the packet goes to a different handler thread before it is sent out of the OVS datapath to the destination port. In real setups the number of recirculations can go up to 4 or 5, sometimes more. There is always a chance to re-order packets while processing upcalls, because userspace will first install the flow and then re-inject the original packet. So, there is a race window when the flow is already installed and the second packet can match it and be forwarded to the destination before the first packet is re-injected. But the fact that packets are going through multiple upcalls handled by different userspace threads makes the reordering noticeably more likely, because we not only have a race between the kernel and a userspace handler (which is hard to avoid), but also between multiple userspace handlers. For example, let's assume that 10 packets got enqueued through a MISS upcall for handler-1, it will start processing them, will install the flow into the kernel and start re-injecting packets back, from where they will go through another MISS to handler-2. Handler-2 will install the flow into the kernel and start re-injecting the packets, while handler-1 continues to re-inject the last of the 10 packets, they will hit the flow installed by handler-2 and be forwarded without going to the handler-2, while handler-2 still re-injects the first of these 10 packets. Given multiple recirculations and misses, these 10 packets may end up completely mixed up on the output from the datapath. Let's allow userspace to specify on which Netlink PID the packets should be upcalled while processing OVS_PACKET_CMD_EXECUTE. This makes it possible to ensure that all the packets are processed by the same handler thread in the userspace even with them being upcalled multiple times in the process. Packets will remain in order since they will be enqueued to the same socket and re-injected in the same order. This doesn't eliminate re-ordering as stated above, since we still have a race between kernel and the userspace thread, but it allows to eliminate races between multiple userspace threads. Userspace knows the PID of the socket on which the original upcall is received, so there is no need to send it up from the kernel. Solution requires storing the value somewhere for the duration of the packet processing. There are two potential places for this: our skb extension or the per-CPU storage. It's not clear which is better, so just following currently used scheme of storing this kind of things along the skb. We still have a decent amount of space in the cb.

Ilya Maximets committed 1 year ago

Commit 59f44c91 parent 5c3f8325 files · +21 −3Browse files

Showing the changes to include/uapi (1 of 5 files). Show all

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include/uapi/linux/openvswitch.h+6−0
@@ -186,6 +186,11 @@ enum ovs_packet_cmd { · 185 unmodified lines
186186 * %OVS_PACKET_ATTR_USERSPACE action specify the Maximum received fragment
187187 * size.
188188 * @OVS_PACKET_ATTR_HASH: Packet hash info (e.g. hash, sw_hash and l4_hash in skb).
189+ * @OVS_PACKET_ATTR_UPCALL_PID: Netlink PID to use for upcalls while
190+ * processing %OVS_PACKET_CMD_EXECUTE. Takes precedence over all other ways
191+ * to determine the Netlink PID including %OVS_USERSPACE_ATTR_PID,
192+ * %OVS_DP_ATTR_UPCALL_PID, %OVS_DP_ATTR_PER_CPU_PIDS and the
193+ * %OVS_VPORT_ATTR_UPCALL_PID.
189194 *
190195 * These attributes follow the &struct ovs_header within the Generic Netlink
191196 * payload for %OVS_PACKET_* commands.
@@ -205,6 +210,7 @@ enum ovs_packet_attr { · 13 unmodified lines
205210 OVS_PACKET_ATTR_MRU, /* Maximum received IP fragment size. */
206211 OVS_PACKET_ATTR_LEN, /* Packet size before truncation. */
207212 OVS_PACKET_ATTR_HASH, /* Packet hash. */
213+ OVS_PACKET_ATTR_UPCALL_PID, /* u32 Netlink PID. */
208214 __OVS_PACKET_ATTR_MAX
209215 };
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