Re: [PATCH] Fix TAP networking on host kernels without IFF_VNET_HDR support

On 24 nov. 2009, at 12:22, Mark McLoughlin wrote:

> On Tue, 2009-11-24 at 12:17 +0100, Pierre Riteau wrote:
>> On 24 nov. 2009, at 11:28, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
>> 
>>> On Tue, 2009-11-24 at 10:06 +0100, Pierre Riteau wrote:
>>>> vnet_hdr is initialized at 1 by default. We need to reset it to 0 if
>>>> the kernel doesn't support IFF_VNET_HDR.
>>>> 
>>>> Signed-off-by: Pierre Riteau <Pierre.Riteau@irisa.fr>
>>> 
>>> Thanks Pierre, I see why this is needed now
>>> 
>>> Acked-by: Mark McLoughlin <markmc@redhat.com>
>>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> Mark.
>> 
>> 
>> Thanks for your rapid answer!
>> 
>> BTW, every time I run qemu I see this error message:
>> 
>>    TUNSETOFFLOAD ioctl() failed: Invalid argument
>> 
>> It is caused by the piece of code at the end of net/tap-linux.c:
>> 
>>    if (ioctl(fd, TUNSETOFFLOAD, offload) != 0) {
>>        offload &= ~TUN_F_UFO;
>>        if (ioctl(fd, TUNSETOFFLOAD, offload) != 0) {
>>            fprintf(stderr, "TUNSETOFFLOAD ioctl() failed: %s\n",
>>                    strerror(errno));
>>        }
>>    }
>> 
>> Isn't there a way to detect whether the kernel supports the
>> TUNSETOFFLOAD ioctl at all?
> 
> The kernel will set errno to EINVAL if TUNSETOFFLOAD isn't supported, so
> we could just ignore that case:
> 
>     if (ioctl(fd, TUNSETOFFLOAD, offload) != 0) {
>          offload &= ~TUN_F_UFO;
>          if (ioctl(fd, TUNSETOFFLOAD, offload) != 0 && errno != EINVAL) {
>              fprintf(stderr, "TUNSETOFFLOAD ioctl() failed: %s\n",
>                      strerror(errno));
>          }
>      }
> 
> The only concern is that we'll also miss out on an error message if
> EINVAL is set for another reason. Currently, the only other reason if we
> pass a offload flag not supported by the kernel, but that should never
> happen.
> 
> Feel free to send a patch with that change and I'll ack it
> 
> Thanks,
> Mark.
> 


Couldn't we probe the kernel with a 0 offload value to check if it supports TUNSETOFFLOAD?
I tried the following and it works on my 2.6.26 Debian kernel.
What do you think? I will send a proper patch if you agree.

On Tue, 2009-11-24 at 22:27 +0100, Pierre Riteau wrote:
> On 24 nov. 2009, at 12:22, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 2009-11-24 at 12:17 +0100, Pierre Riteau wrote:

> >> Isn't there a way to detect whether the kernel supports the
> >> TUNSETOFFLOAD ioctl at all?
> > 
> > The kernel will set errno to EINVAL if TUNSETOFFLOAD isn't supported, so
> > we could just ignore that case:
> > 
> >     if (ioctl(fd, TUNSETOFFLOAD, offload) != 0) {
> >          offload &= ~TUN_F_UFO;
> >          if (ioctl(fd, TUNSETOFFLOAD, offload) != 0 && errno != EINVAL) {
> >              fprintf(stderr, "TUNSETOFFLOAD ioctl() failed: %s\n",
> >                      strerror(errno));
> >          }
> >      }
> > 
> > The only concern is that we'll also miss out on an error message if
> > EINVAL is set for another reason. Currently, the only other reason if we
> > pass a offload flag not supported by the kernel, but that should never
> > happen.
> > 
> > Feel free to send a patch with that change and I'll ack it
....
> 
> Couldn't we probe the kernel with a 0 offload value to check if it supports TUNSETOFFLOAD?
> I tried the following and it works on my 2.6.26 Debian kernel.
> What do you think? I will send a proper patch if you agree.
> 
> diff --git a/net/tap-linux.c b/net/tap-linux.c
> index 0f621a2..e038e1a 100644
> --- a/net/tap-linux.c
> +++ b/net/tap-linux.c
> @@ -129,6 +129,11 @@ void tap_fd_set_offload(int fd, int csum, int tso4,
>  {
>      unsigned int offload = 0;
>  
> +    /* Check if our kernel supports TUNSETOFFLOAD */
> +    if (ioctl(fd, TUNSETOFFLOAD, 0) != 0 && errno == EINVAL) {
> +        return;
> +    }
> +

It's not ideal because a) it's another syscall and b) you're briefly
disabling any flags that may have been set previously ... but in our
case, neither is a real concern and it's a nice, simple solution.

So, sounds good to me :)

Cheers,
Mark.