On Mon, 8 Jan 2024 15:13:25 +0000
Konstantin Ananyev <konstantin.anan...@huawei.com> wrote:
> > I have been looking at a problem reported by Sandesh
> > where packet capture does not work if rx/tx burst is done in secondary
> > process.
> >
> > The root cause is that existing rx/tx callback model just doesn't work
> > unless the process doing the rx/tx burst calls is the same one that
> > registered the callbacks.
> >
> > An example sequence would be:
> > 1. dumpcap (or pdump) as secondary tells pdump in primary to register
> > callback
> > 2. secondary process calls rx_burst.
> > 3. rx_burst sees the callback but it has pointer pdump_rx which is not
> > necessarily
> > at same location in primary and secondary process.
> > 4. indirect function call in secondary to bad location likely causes
> > crash.
>
> As I remember, RX/TX callbacks were never intended to work over multiple
> processes.
> Right now RX/TX callbacks are private for the process, different process
> simply should not
> see/execute them.
> I.E. it callbacks list is part of 'struct rte_eth_dev' itself, not the
> rte_eth_dev.data that is shared
> between processes.
> It should be normal, wehn for the same port/queue you will end-up with
> different list of callbacks
> for different processes.
> So, unless I am missing something, I don't see how we can end-up with 3) and
> 4) from above:
> From my understanding secondary process will never see/call primary's
> callbacks.
>
> About pdump itself, it was a while when I looked at it last time, but as I
> remember to start it to work,
> server process has to call rte_pdump_init() which in terns register PDUMP_MP
> handler.
> I suppose for the secondary process to act as a 'pdump server' it needs to
> call rte_pdump_init() itself,
> though I am not sure such option is supported right now.
>
Did some more tests with modified testpmd, and reached some conclusions:
The logical interface would be to allow rte_pdump_init() to be called by
the process that would be using rx/tx burst API's.
This doesn't work as it should because the multi-process socket API
assumes that the it only runs the server in primary. The secondary
can start its own MP thread, but it won't work:
Primary EAL: Multi-process socket /var/run/dpdk/rte/mp_socket
Secondary: EAL: Multi-process socket
/var/run/dpdk/rte/mp_socket_6057_1ccd4157fd5
The problem is when client (pdump or dumpcap) tries to run, it uses the
mp_socket
in the primary which causes: EAL: Cannot find action: mp_pdump
Looks like the whole MP socket mechanism is just not up to this.
Maybe pdump needs to have its own socket and control thread?
Or MP socket needs to have some multicast fanout to all secondaries?
2. Fut
