Subject: Re: r8169 : always copying the rx buffer to new skb

From: John Lumby <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 17:26:22 -0400

On 04/18/11 13:27, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> At least some variants of the hardware have a bug [...] avoid allocation failures later on (and
> to save memory) the buffers must be copied rather than passed up the
> stack and reallocated.

Yes,  I can see that the always-copy method eliminates all possibility 
of an allocation failure,   but an *occasional* allocation failure does 
no harm  -  the driver just retains ownership of that descriptor and 
tries again on the next rx_interrupt.     With a rx ring of N buffers,  
it would take something like N-(small_number) consecutive allocation 
failures to cause a failure to be exposed up to the application.    
That's the way the code used to work and the way I've re-patched it to 
work and I've  verified that on my 8168c by simulating an allocation 
failure on 15 out of every 16 rx-Interrupts  (unhooking the current skb 
and then simply not allocating a new skb and not giving the 
corresponding descriptor to the asic) and everything works just fine,  
with just a slight drop in throughput (down to 987 Mbits/sec,  still 
well ahead of the always-copy).

So do we really need to be that concerned about occasional allocation 
failure?

And if someone is that concerned,   then,   with my proposal,  they can 
leave the rx_copybreak at its default of 16383,   when every packet is 
copied anyway.     (My patch takes a slightly different approach if the 
allocation of the new skb fails  -   current 2.6.39 drops the packet,   
I would propose to unhook and retain the descriptor because I can 
replenish later  -  but that is also debatable).     Also that's why I 
favour making the rx ring size configurable.

On 04/18/11 14:21, Francois Romieu wrote:
> Short answer: it's mostly related to CVE-2009-4537 (see git log).

I understand the need to make the rx_buf_size 16383 to defeat the DOS 
attacker,   no suggestion to alter that.     I'm just not sure I see why 
that has to imply the always_copy.
> I may resurrect some alternate fix - i.e. detect corrupted Tx descriptors
> and reset before things gets wrong - but it is not easy to prove it right
> since it may be necessary to tailor it for each member of the 816x / 810x
> family. Some input from Realtek may help though.
>
Yes,  more input the better,    and especially I recognize that I have 
tested only my RTL8168c and maybe other models behave differently.

On 04/18/11 13:27, Ben Hutchings wrote:
>> the number of rx buffers allocated at open should be configurable by
>> module param.
> [...]
>
> No, it should implement the ethtool set_ringparam operation.
>
Ah  ok    thanks.     I'll take a look at that.

John Lumby