bpf: add meta pointer for direct access

This work enables generic transfer of metadata from XDP into skb. The basic idea is that we can make use of the fact that the resulting skb must be linear and already comes with a larger headroom for supporting bpf_xdp_adjust_head(), which mangles xdp->data. Here, we base our work on a similar principle and introduce a small helper bpf_xdp_adjust_meta() for adjusting a new pointer called xdp->data_meta. Thus, the packet has a flexible and programmable room for meta data, followed by the actual packet data. struct xdp_buff is therefore laid out that we first point to data_hard_start, then data_meta directly prepended to data followed by data_end marking the end of packet. bpf_xdp_adjust_head() takes into account whether we have meta data already prepended and if so, memmove()s this along with the given offset provided there's enough room. xdp->data_meta is optional and programs are not required to use it. The rationale is that when we process the packet in XDP (e.g. as DoS filter), we can push further meta data along with it for the XDP_PASS case, and give the guarantee that a clsact ingress BPF program on the same device can pick this up for further post-processing. Since we work with skb there, we can also set skb->mark, skb->priority or other skb meta data out of BPF, thus having this scratch space generic and programmable allows for more flexibility than defining a direct 1:1 transfer of potentially new XDP members into skb (it's also more efficient as we don't need to initialize/handle each of such new members). The facility also works together with GRO aggregation. The scratch space at the head of the packet can be multiple of 4 byte up to 32 byte large. Drivers not yet supporting xdp->data_meta can simply be set up with xdp->data_meta as xdp->data + 1 as bpf_xdp_adjust_meta() will detect this and bail out, such that the subsequent match against xdp->data for later access is guaranteed to fail. The verifier treats xdp->data_meta/xdp->data the same way as we treat xdp->data/xdp->data_end pointer comparisons. The requirement for doing the compare against xdp->data is that it hasn't been modified from it's original address we got from ctx access. It may have a range marking already from prior successful xdp->data/xdp->data_end pointer comparisons though.

DBDaniel Borkmann committed 9 years ago