Re: device compatibility interface for live migration with assigned devices

On 2020/8/14 下午1:16, Yan Zhao wrote: > On Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 12:24:50PM +0800, Jason Wang wrote: > > On 2020/8/10 下午3:46, Yan Zhao wrote: > > > > driver is it handled by? > > > It looks that the devlink is for network device specific, and in > > > devlink.h, it says > > > include/uapi/linux/devlink.h - Network physical device Netlink > > > interface, > > > > Actually not, I think there used to have some discussion last year and the > > conclusion is to remove this comment. > > > > It supports IB and probably vDPA in the future. > > > hmm... sorry, I didn't find the referred discussion. only below discussion > regarding to why to add devlink. > > https://www.mail-archive.com/netdev@vger.kernel.org/msg95801.html > >This doesn't seem to be too much related to networking? Why can't something > >like this be in sysfs? > > It is related to networking quite bit. There has been couple of > iteration of this, including sysfs and configfs implementations. There > has been a consensus reached that this should be done by netlink. I > believe netlink is really the best for this purpose. Sysfs is not a good > idea See the discussion here: https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/netdev/patch/20191115223355.1277139-... > > https://www.mail-archive.com/netdev@vger.kernel.org/msg96102.html > >there is already a way to change eth/ib via > >echo 'eth' > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/mlx4_core/0000:02:00.0/mlx4_port1 > > > >sounds like this is another way to achieve the same? > > It is. However the current way is driver-specific, not correct. > For mlx5, we need the same, it cannot be done in this way. Do devlink is > the correct way to go. > > https://lwn.net/Articles/674867/ > There a is need for some userspace API that would allow to expose things > that are not directly related to any device class like net_device of > ib_device, but rather chip-wide/switch-ASIC-wide stuff. > > Use cases: > 1) get/set of port type (Ethernet/InfiniBand) > 2) monitoring of hardware messages to and from chip > 3) setting up port splitters - split port into multiple ones and squash again, > enables usage of splitter cable > 4) setting up shared buffers - shared among multiple ports within one chip > > > > we actually can also retrieve the same information through sysfs, .e.g > > |- [path to device] > |--- migration > | |--- self > | | |---device_api > | | |---mdev_type > | | |---software_version > | | |---device_id > | | |---aggregator > | |--- compatible > | | |---device_api > | | |---mdev_type > | | |---software_version > | | |---device_id > | | |---aggregator > Yes but: - You need one file per attribute (one syscall for one attribute) - Attribute is coupled with kobject All of above seems unnecessary. Another point, as we discussed in another thread, it's really hard to make sure the above API work for all types of devices and frameworks. So having a vendor specific API looks much better.

From the POV of userspace mgmt apps doing device compat checking / migration,