On 4/5/18 11:52 PM, Jiri Pirko wrote: > Thu, Apr 05, 2018 at 11:06:41PM CEST, d...@cumulusnetworks.com wrote: >> On 4/5/18 2:10 PM, David Ahern wrote: >>> >>> The ASIC here is the kernel tables in a namespace. It does not make >>> sense to have 2 devlink instances for a single namespace. >> >> I put this example controller in netdevsim per a suggestion from Ido. >> The netdevsim seemed like a good idea given that modules intention -- >> testing network facilities. Perhaps I should have done this as a >> completely standalone module ... >> >> The intention is to treat the kernel's tables *per namespace* as a >> standalone entity that can be managed very similar to ASIC resources. > > So you say you want to treat a namespace as an ASIC? That sounds very > odd to me :/
Why? The kernel has forwarding tables, acl's, etc just like the ASIC, and each namespace is a separate set of tables. If you think about it, userspace "programs" the kernel just like mlxsw and userspace SDKs "program" an asic. >> Given that I can add a resource controller module >> (drivers/net/kern_res_mgr.c?) that creates a 'struct device' per network >> namespace with a devlink instance. In this case the device would very >> much be tied to the namespace 1:1. > > That sounds more reasonable and accurate, yet still odd. You would not > have any netdevices there? Any ports? > Sure, what ever ports are assigned to or created in the namespace. Nothing about the devlink API says it has to be a real h/w device. Nothing about the devlink API says it can only be used for real h/w that has ports represented by netdevices that the devlink instance some how has "control" over. As the netdevsim demo shows, I can build an L3 resource controller for the kernel tables using just the devlink API and the in-kernel notifiers.
