>-----Original Message-----
>From: netdev-ow...@vger.kernel.org [mailto:netdev-ow...@vger.kernel.org] On
>Behalf Of sfel...@gmail.com
>Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2015 12:17 AM
>To: netdev@vger.kernel.org
>Cc: j...@resnulli.us; da...@davemloft.net; f.faine...@gmail.com;
>ro...@cumulusnetworks.com
>Subject: [RFC PATCH net-next 0/2] Add new switchdev device class
>
>From: Scott Feldman <sfel...@gmail.com>
>
>
>So what next? I'd rather not build APIs around sysfs, so we need a netlink
>API
>we can build on top of this. It's not really rtnl. Maybe genl would work?
>What ever it is, we'd need to teach iproute2 about a new 'switch' command.
>
[@Ronen] I developed PoC code based on genl which allows access for what I
call device options. It generalizes libteam/team driver option handling.
It allows for fields of all Netlink scalar or string types as well as arrays.
It differentiates between port-specific and device options.
(It was not limited to read-only but this could be changed to address the
concerns raised on this thread)
Extending to Tables from just a list of named options is welcomed.
The diagram below shows possible architecture.
+-----------------------------------------+
| tool (e.g. swdevnl, iproute2) |
+-----------------------------------------+
|
+-----------------+
| libswdev |
+-----------------+
|
+-----------------------------+
| libnl3 |
+-----------------------------+
|
User |
-------------------------------------------------
Kernel |
|
+-------------------+ +-------------------+
| genetlink | | rtnetlink |
+-------------------+ +-------------------+
|
+-----------+
| swdev |
+-----------+
|
+-----------------------------------------+
| |
| SOMEswitch |
| |
+-----------------------------------------+
Libswdev in the diagram is a user space library which should abstract the
netlink interaction and encoding details from user-space tools.
Swdev is a kernel module which provides similar abstraction to drivers. It
saves drivers from most of the low level code.
Drivers register their supported options (or Table/Fields) with this module
and provide getters functions. The Swdev kernel module provides the genl API
for exporting device specific information.
This architecture allows for a generic tool to discover the information
available from each driver/port. The tool could extract sufficient
information which allows it to present user-friendly interface to users for
drilling down and retrieving specific details.
>Netlink API would allow us to represent switch-wide objects such as registers,
>tables, stats, firmware, and maybe even control. I think with with netlink
>TLVs, we can create a framework for these objects but still allow the switch
>driver provide switch-specific info. For example, a table object:
>
>[TABLES]
> [TABLE]
> [FIELDS]
> [FIELD]
> [ID, TYPE]
> [DATA]
> [ID, VALUE]
>
[@Ronen] Some additional information could be useful. TABLE name, FIELD name,
(possible also short names for CLI commands or pretty printing of table
header), FIELD value range (help with pp), TABLE/FIELD description.
>Maybe iproute2 has pretty-printers for specific switches like ethtool has for
>reg dumps.
>
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