[Cake] act_connmark + dscp

[Kevin Darbyshire-Bryant]

I’m tired after the last 3 days working on $paidwork (4 jobs in 3 days) so can’t think straight, anyway...

> On 10 Mar 2019, at 23:56, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <toke at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> Kevin Darbyshire-Bryant <kevin at darbyshire-bryant.me.uk> writes:
> 

<some context snipped>
>> 
>> Yes.  I’d point out the (hopefully obvious) that the flag mask needs
>> to be one bit bigger than you might immediately think.  e.g. diffserv4
>> needs to store 5 values (0-4), 3 bits. 0 is being used as an implied
>> ’tin is not set, fall back to DSCP’.  One could store DSCP+1 of course
>> and use the same logic.
> 
> Yeah, or one can just squat on a whole byte like I do in the example ;)

As do I for my ‘DSCP + set/not set flag’ :-)

> 
>> 
>> The ugliness of doing the diffserv parsing is what prompted the idea
>> of storing the DSCP directly and I felt the stored tin selection was
>> effectively abstracting the diffserv field anyway.
> 
> Right, but that means that the CAKE interpretation of the fwmark would
> have to change from something that selects the tin, to something that is
> treated as a DSCP mark. I think this was the part that I was missing
> before. I don't think this is a good idea, as that means we tie the
> marks to one particular use case.

I did say it was incompatible with the existing tin storing idea right from day 1 and why I was so keen/worried by the fact it had already gone upstream.

> 
>> Storing the DSCP is more compatible with differing egress v ingress
>> mappings (eg. egress diffserv4, ingress diffserv3 though I can’t
>> really think of a use case for that)
> 
> I think that if someone wants to do something like that, we are way out
> of "simple use case that we want to actively support" territory, and can
> legitimately ask people to go write a BPF filter or something :)
> 
>> Of course using fwmark as tin number selector in cake doesn’t preclude
>> some other mechanism of storing & recovering DSCP to/from firewall
>> mark e.g. the previously discussed act-connmark+dscp which would help
>> anyone who wanted to do such ‘link traversing’ DSCP shenanigans.  That
>> of course makes you happier since cake doesn’t embed itself further
>> into conntrack.
> 
> Yeah, I definitely don't think CAKE has any business writing DSCP values
> into the mark. However, as I said before, there may be a case for adding

I’m going forward on the basis that *cake* ’storing DSCP within fwmark’ idea has died and will be trying to cobble something together within act_connmark as that has a wider potential client base than just cake. 

> an option to write the tin selection back to conntrack. Something like
> the patch below would do it (with an option to control it, of course),
> but it does incur a dependency on another conntrack header, so I'm not
> sure if it will be acceptable to upstream. Also, we would need to figure
> out how the option should work.

I think before expending any further mental effort on that, the question should be asked of the kernel people.  I don’t see the point in working out the semantics of something that ultimately won’t be accepted.

> The alternative would be to use another mechanism; the iptables rules
> replication is one example. Another could be adding a conntrack helper
> to eBPF…
> 
> -Toke
> 
> 
> diff --git a/sch_cake.c b/sch_cake.c
> index a8fa224..c6b7dd9 100644
> --- a/sch_cake.c
> +++ b/sch_cake.c
> @@ -78,6 +78,7 @@
> 
> #if IS_REACHABLE(CONFIG_NF_CONNTRACK)
> #include <net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_core.h>
> +#include <net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_ecache.h>
> #include <net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_zones.h>
> #include <net/netfilter/nf_conntrack.h>
> #endif
> @@ -1646,6 +1647,27 @@ static u8 cake_handle_diffserv(struct sk_buff *skb, u16 wash)
> 	}
> }
> 
> +static void cake_set_tin_connmark(struct cake_sched_data *q,
> +				  struct sk_buff *skb, u32 tin)
> +{
> +#if IS_REACHABLE(CONFIG_NF_CONNTRACK)
> +	enum ip_conntrack_info ctinfo;
> +	struct nf_conn *ct;
> +	u32 newmark;
> +
> +	ct = nf_ct_get(skb, &ctinfo);
> +	if (ct) {
> +		newmark = (ct->mark & ~q->fwmark_mask);
> +		newmark ^= (tin << q->fwmark_shft) & q->fwmark_mask;
> +
> +		if (ct->mark != newmark) {
> +			ct->mark = newmark;
> +			nf_conntrack_event_cache(IPCT_MARK, ct);
> +		}
> +	}
> +#endif
> +}
> +
> static struct cake_tin_data *cake_select_tin(struct Qdisc *sch,
> 					     struct sk_buff *skb)
> {
> @@ -1678,6 +1700,8 @@ static struct cake_tin_data *cake_select_tin(struct Qdisc *sch,
> 			tin = 0;
> 	}
> 
> +	cake_set_tin_connmark(q, skb, tin);
> +
> 	return &q->tins[tin];
> }


Cheers,

Kevin D-B

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