Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC bpf-next 01/20] trait: limited KV store for packet metadata

From: Jakub Sitnicki <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2025 20:24:31 +0100

On Wed, Mar 05, 2025 at 03:31 PM +01, [email-masked] wrote:
> From: Arthur Fabre <[email-masked]>
>
> A (very limited) KV store to support storing KVs in the packet headroom,
> with:
> - 64 keys (0-63).
> - 2, 4 or 8 byte values.
> - O(1) lookup
> - O(n) insertion
> - A fixed 16 byte header.
>
> Values are stored ordered by key, immediately following the fixed
> header.
>
> This could be extended in the future, for now it implements the smallest
> possible API. The API intentionally uses u64 keys to not impose
> restrictions on the implementation in the future.
>
> I picked 2¸ 4, and 8 bytes arbitrarily. We could also support 0 sized
> values for use as flags.
> A 16 byte value could be useful to store UUIDs and IPv6 addresses.
> If we want more than 3 sizes, we can add a word to the header (for a
> total of 24 bytes) to support 7 sizes.
>
> We could also allow users to set several consecutive keys in one
> trait_set() call to support storing larger values.
>
> Implemented in the header file so functions are always inlinable.
>
> Signed-off-by: Arthur Fabre <[email-masked]>
> ---

[...]

> +/**
> + * trait_get() - Get a trait key.
> + * @traits: Start of trait store area.
> + * @key: The key to get.
> + * @val: Where to put stored value.
> + * @val_len: The length of val.
> + *
> + * Return:
> + * * %>0      - Actual size of value.
> + * * %-EINVAL - Key or length invalid.
> + * * %-ENOENT - Key has not been set with trait_set() previously.
> + * * %-ENOSPC - Val is not big enough to hold stored value.
> + */
> +static __always_inline
> +int trait_get(void *traits, u64 key, void *val, u64 val_len)

Hmm. I think that passing void *val will bite us on big endian.
Seems I can't pass an u64 * if you don't know the value size up front.
For values under 8 bytes I would end up with bytes shifted to the left.
No?

Take u64 *val instead and copy it in at the right offset?

> +{
> +	if (!__trait_valid_key(key))
> +		return -EINVAL;
> +
> +	struct __trait_hdr h = *(struct __trait_hdr *)traits;
> +
> +	/* Check key is set */
> +	if (!((h.high & (1ull << key)) || (h.low & (1ull << key))))
> +		return -ENOENT;
> +
> +	/* Offset of value of this key */
> +	int off = __trait_offset(h, key);
> +
> +	/* Figure out our length */
> +	int real_len = __trait_total_length(__trait_and(h, (1ull << key)));
> +
> +	if (real_len > val_len)
> +		return -ENOSPC;
> +
> +	memcpy(val, traits + off, real_len);
> +	return real_len;
> +}