Subject: Re: [net-next/RFC PATCH v1 1/4] net: Introduce new napi fields for rx/tx queues

From: Jakub Kicinski <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2023 16:09:25 -0700

On Fri, 28 Jul 2023 15:37:14 -0700 Nambiar, Amritha wrote:
> Hi Jakub, I have the next version of patches ready (I'll send that in a 
> bit). I suggest if you could take a look at it and let me know your 
> thoughts and then we can proceed from there.

Great, looking forward.

> About dumping queues and NAPIs separately, are you thinking about having 
> both per-NAPI and per-queue instances, or do you think only one will 
> suffice. The plan was to follow this work with a 'set-napi' series, 
> something like,
> set-napi <napi_id> queues <q_id1, q_id2, ...>
> to configure the queue[s] that are to be serviced by the napi instance.
> 
> In this case, dumping the NAPIs would be beneficial especially when 
> there are multiple queues on the NAPI.
> 
> WRT per-queue, are there a set of parameters that needs to exposed 
> besides what's already handled by ethtool...

Not much at this point, maybe memory model. Maybe stats if we want to
put stats in the same command. But the fact that sysfs has a bunch of
per queue attributes makes me think that sooner or later we'll want
queue as a full object in netlink. And starting out that way makes 
the whole API cleaner, at least in my opinion.

If we have another object which wants to refer to queues (e.g. page
pool) it's easier to express the topology when it's clear what is an
object and what's just an attribute.

> Also, to configure a queue 
> on a NAPI, set-queue <qid> <napi_id>, the existing NAPIs would have to 
> be looked up from the queue parameters dumped.

The look up should not be much of a problem.

And don't you think that:

  set-queue queue 1 napi-id 101
  set-queue queue 2 napi-id 101

is more natural than:

  set-napi napi-id 101 queues [1, 2]

Especially in presence of conflicts. If user tries:

  set-napi napi-id 101 queues [1, 2]
  set-napi napi-id 102 queues [1, 2]

Do both napis now serve those queues? May seem obvious to us, but
"philosophically" why does setting an attribute of object 102 change
attributes of object 101?

If we ever gain the ability to create queues it will be:

  create-queue napi-id xyz

which also matches set-queue more nicely than napi base API.