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authorLibravatar Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2023-02-21 18:24:12 -0800
committerLibravatar Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2023-02-21 18:24:12 -0800
commit5b7c4cabbb65f5c469464da6c5f614cbd7f730f2 (patch)
treecc5c2d0a898769fd59549594fedb3ee6f84e59a0 /Documentation/process/stable-api-nonsense.rst
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Merge tag 'net-next-6.3' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net-nextgrafted
Pull networking updates from Jakub Kicinski: "Core: - Add dedicated kmem_cache for typical/small skb->head, avoid having to access struct page at kfree time, and improve memory use. - Introduce sysctl to set default RPS configuration for new netdevs. - Define Netlink protocol specification format which can be used to describe messages used by each family and auto-generate parsers. Add tools for generating kernel data structures and uAPI headers. - Expose all net/core sysctls inside netns. - Remove 4s sleep in netpoll if carrier is instantly detected on boot. - Add configurable limit of MDB entries per port, and port-vlan. - Continue populating drop reasons throughout the stack. - Retire a handful of legacy Qdiscs and classifiers. Protocols: - Support IPv4 big TCP (TSO frames larger than 64kB). - Add IP_LOCAL_PORT_RANGE socket option, to control local port range on socket by socket basis. - Track and report in procfs number of MPTCP sockets used. - Support mixing IPv4 and IPv6 flows in the in-kernel MPTCP path manager. - IPv6: don't check net.ipv6.route.max_size and rely on garbage collection to free memory (similarly to IPv4). - Support Penultimate Segment Pop (PSP) flavor in SRv6 (RFC8986). - ICMP: add per-rate limit counters. - Add support for user scanning requests in ieee802154. - Remove static WEP support. - Support minimal Wi-Fi 7 Extremely High Throughput (EHT) rate reporting. - WiFi 7 EHT channel puncturing support (client & AP). BPF: - Add a rbtree data structure following the "next-gen data structure" precedent set by recently added linked list, that is, by using kfunc + kptr instead of adding a new BPF map type. - Expose XDP hints via kfuncs with initial support for RX hash and timestamp metadata. - Add BPF_F_NO_TUNNEL_KEY extension to bpf_skb_set_tunnel_key to better support decap on GRE tunnel devices not operating in collect metadata. - Improve x86 JIT's codegen for PROBE_MEM runtime error checks. - Remove the need for trace_printk_lock for bpf_trace_printk and bpf_trace_vprintk helpers. - Extend libbpf's bpf_tracing.h support for tracing arguments of kprobes/uprobes and syscall as a special case. - Significantly reduce the search time for module symbols by livepatch and BPF. - Enable cpumasks to be used as kptrs, which is useful for tracing programs tracking which tasks end up running on which CPUs in different time intervals. - Add support for BPF trampoline on s390x and riscv64. - Add capability to export the XDP features supported by the NIC. - Add __bpf_kfunc tag for marking kernel functions as kfuncs. - Add cgroup.memory=nobpf kernel parameter option to disable BPF memory accounting for container environments. Netfilter: - Remove the CLUSTERIP target. It has been marked as obsolete for years, and we still have WARN splats wrt races of the out-of-band /proc interface installed by this target. - Add 'destroy' commands to nf_tables. They are identical to the existing 'delete' commands, but do not return an error if the referenced object (set, chain, rule...) did not exist. Driver API: - Improve cpumask_local_spread() locality to help NICs set the right IRQ affinity on AMD platforms. - Separate C22 and C45 MDIO bus transactions more clearly. - Introduce new DCB table to control DSCP rewrite on egress. - Support configuration of Physical Layer Collision Avoidance (PLCA) Reconciliation Sublayer (RS) (802.3cg-2019). Modern version of shared medium Ethernet. - Support for MAC Merge layer (IEEE 802.3-2018 clause 99). Allowing preemption of low priority frames by high priority frames. - Add support for controlling MACSec offload using netlink SET. - Rework devlink instance refcounts to allow registration and de-registration under the instance lock. Split the code into multiple files, drop some of the unnecessarily granular locks and factor out common parts of netlink operation handling. - Add TX frame aggregation parameters (for USB drivers). - Add a new attr TCA_EXT_WARN_MSG to report TC (offload) warning messages with notifications for debug. - Allow offloading of UDP NEW connections via act_ct. - Add support for per action HW stats in TC. - Support hardware miss to TC action (continue processing in SW from a specific point in the action chain). - Warn if old Wireless Extension user space interface is used with modern cfg80211/mac80211 drivers. Do not support Wireless Extensions for Wi-Fi 7 devices at all. Everyone should switch to using nl80211 interface instead. - Improve the CAN bit timing configuration. Use extack to return error messages directly to user space, update the SJW handling, including the definition of a new default value that will benefit CAN-FD controllers, by increasing their oscillator tolerance. New hardware / drivers: - Ethernet: - nVidia BlueField-3 support (control traffic driver) - Ethernet support for imx93 SoCs - Motorcomm yt8531 gigabit Ethernet PHY - onsemi NCN26000 10BASE-T1S PHY (with support for PLCA) - Microchip LAN8841 PHY (incl. cable diagnostics and PTP) - Amlogic gxl MDIO mux - WiFi: - RealTek RTL8188EU (rtl8xxxu) - Qualcomm Wi-Fi 7 devices (ath12k) - CAN: - Renesas R-Car V4H Drivers: - Bluetooth: - Set Per Platform Antenna Gain (PPAG) for Intel controllers. - Ethernet NICs: - Intel (1G, igc): - support TSN / Qbv / packet scheduling features of i226 model - Intel (100G, ice): - use GNSS subsystem instead of TTY - multi-buffer XDP support - extend support for GPIO pins to E823 devices - nVidia/Mellanox: - update the shared buffer configuration on PFC commands - implement PTP adjphase function for HW offset control - TC support for Geneve and GRE with VF tunnel offload - more efficient crypto key management method - multi-port eswitch support - Netronome/Corigine: - add DCB IEEE support - support IPsec offloading for NFP3800 - Freescale/NXP (enetc): - support XDP_REDIRECT for XDP non-linear buffers - improve reconfig, avoid link flap and waiting for idle - support MAC Merge layer - Other NICs: - sfc/ef100: add basic devlink support for ef100 - ionic: rx_push mode operation (writing descriptors via MMIO) - bnxt: use the auxiliary bus abstraction for RDMA - r8169: disable ASPM and reset bus in case of tx timeout - cpsw: support QSGMII mode for J721e CPSW9G - cpts: support pulse-per-second output - ngbe: add an mdio bus driver - usbnet: optimize usbnet_bh() by avoiding unnecessary queuing - r8152: handle devices with FW with NCM support - amd-xgbe: support 10Mbps, 2.5GbE speeds and rx-adaptation - virtio-net: support multi buffer XDP - virtio/vsock: replace virtio_vsock_pkt with sk_buff - tsnep: XDP support - Ethernet high-speed switches: - nVidia/Mellanox (mlxsw): - add support for latency TLV (in FW control messages) - Microchip (sparx5): - separate explicit and implicit traffic forwarding rules, make the implicit rules always active - add support for egress DSCP rewrite - IS0 VCAP support (Ingress Classification) - IS2 VCAP filters (protos, L3 addrs, L4 ports, flags, ToS etc.) - ES2 VCAP support (Egress Access Control) - support for Per-Stream Filtering and Policing (802.1Q, 8.6.5.1) - Ethernet embedded switches: - Marvell (mv88e6xxx): - add MAB (port auth) offload support - enable PTP receive for mv88e6390 - NXP (ocelot): - support MAC Merge layer - support for the the vsc7512 internal copper phys - Microchip: - lan9303: convert to PHYLINK - lan966x: support TC flower filter statistics - lan937x: PTP support for KSZ9563/KSZ8563 and LAN937x - lan937x: support Credit Based Shaper configuration - ksz9477: support Energy Efficient Ethernet - other: - qca8k: convert to regmap read/write API, use bulk operations - rswitch: Improve TX timestamp accuracy - Intel WiFi (iwlwifi): - EHT (Wi-Fi 7) rate reporting - STEP equalizer support: transfer some STEP (connection to radio on platforms with integrated wifi) related parameters from the BIOS to the firmware. - Qualcomm 802.11ax WiFi (ath11k): - IPQ5018 support - Fine Timing Measurement (FTM) responder role support - channel 177 support - MediaTek WiFi (mt76): - per-PHY LED support - mt7996: EHT (Wi-Fi 7) support - Wireless Ethernet Dispatch (WED) reset support - switch to using page pool allocator - RealTek WiFi (rtw89): - support new version of Bluetooth co-existance - Mobile: - rmnet: support TX aggregation" * tag 'net-next-6.3' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net-next: (1872 commits) page_pool: add a comment explaining the fragment counter usage net: ethtool: fix __ethtool_dev_mm_supported() implementation ethtool: pse-pd: Fix double word in comments xsk: add linux/vmalloc.h to xsk.c sefltests: netdevsim: wait for devlink instance after netns removal selftest: fib_tests: Always cleanup before exit net/mlx5e: Align IPsec ASO result memory to be as required by hardware net/mlx5e: TC, Set CT miss to the specific ct action instance net/mlx5e: Rename CHAIN_TO_REG to MAPPED_OBJ_TO_REG net/mlx5: Refactor tc miss handling to a single function net/mlx5: Kconfig: Make tc offload depend on tc skb extension net/sched: flower: Support hardware miss to tc action net/sched: flower: Move filter handle initialization earlier net/sched: cls_api: Support hardware miss to tc action net/sched: Rename user cookie and act cookie sfc: fix builds without CONFIG_RTC_LIB sfc: clean up some inconsistent indentings net/mlx4_en: Introduce flexible array to silence overflow warning net: lan966x: Fix possible deadlock inside PTP net/ulp: Remove redundant ->clone() test in inet_clone_ulp(). ...
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+.. _stable_api_nonsense:
+
+The Linux Kernel Driver Interface
+==================================
+
+(all of your questions answered and then some)
+
+Greg Kroah-Hartman <greg@kroah.com>
+
+This is being written to try to explain why Linux **does not have a binary
+kernel interface, nor does it have a stable kernel interface**.
+
+.. note::
+
+ Please realize that this article describes the **in kernel** interfaces, not
+ the kernel to userspace interfaces.
+
+ The kernel to userspace interface is the one that application programs use,
+ the syscall interface. That interface is **very** stable over time, and
+ will not break. I have old programs that were built on a pre 0.9something
+ kernel that still work just fine on the latest 2.6 kernel release.
+ That interface is the one that users and application programmers can count
+ on being stable.
+
+
+Executive Summary
+-----------------
+You think you want a stable kernel interface, but you really do not, and
+you don't even know it. What you want is a stable running driver, and
+you get that only if your driver is in the main kernel tree. You also
+get lots of other good benefits if your driver is in the main kernel
+tree, all of which has made Linux into such a strong, stable, and mature
+operating system which is the reason you are using it in the first
+place.
+
+
+Intro
+-----
+
+It's only the odd person who wants to write a kernel driver that needs
+to worry about the in-kernel interfaces changing. For the majority of
+the world, they neither see this interface, nor do they care about it at
+all.
+
+First off, I'm not going to address **any** legal issues about closed
+source, hidden source, binary blobs, source wrappers, or any other term
+that describes kernel drivers that do not have their source code
+released under the GPL. Please consult a lawyer if you have any legal
+questions, I'm a programmer and hence, I'm just going to be describing
+the technical issues here (not to make light of the legal issues, they
+are real, and you do need to be aware of them at all times.)
+
+So, there are two main topics here, binary kernel interfaces and stable
+kernel source interfaces. They both depend on each other, but we will
+discuss the binary stuff first to get it out of the way.
+
+
+Binary Kernel Interface
+-----------------------
+Assuming that we had a stable kernel source interface for the kernel, a
+binary interface would naturally happen too, right? Wrong. Please
+consider the following facts about the Linux kernel:
+
+ - Depending on the version of the C compiler you use, different kernel
+ data structures will contain different alignment of structures, and
+ possibly include different functions in different ways (putting
+ functions inline or not.) The individual function organization
+ isn't that important, but the different data structure padding is
+ very important.
+
+ - Depending on what kernel build options you select, a wide range of
+ different things can be assumed by the kernel:
+
+ - different structures can contain different fields
+ - Some functions may not be implemented at all, (i.e. some locks
+ compile away to nothing for non-SMP builds.)
+ - Memory within the kernel can be aligned in different ways,
+ depending on the build options.
+
+ - Linux runs on a wide range of different processor architectures.
+ There is no way that binary drivers from one architecture will run
+ on another architecture properly.
+
+Now a number of these issues can be addressed by simply compiling your
+module for the exact specific kernel configuration, using the same exact
+C compiler that the kernel was built with. This is sufficient if you
+want to provide a module for a specific release version of a specific
+Linux distribution. But multiply that single build by the number of
+different Linux distributions and the number of different supported
+releases of the Linux distribution and you quickly have a nightmare of
+different build options on different releases. Also realize that each
+Linux distribution release contains a number of different kernels, all
+tuned to different hardware types (different processor types and
+different options), so for even a single release you will need to create
+multiple versions of your module.
+
+Trust me, you will go insane over time if you try to support this kind
+of release, I learned this the hard way a long time ago...
+
+
+Stable Kernel Source Interfaces
+-------------------------------
+
+This is a much more "volatile" topic if you talk to people who try to
+keep a Linux kernel driver that is not in the main kernel tree up to
+date over time.
+
+Linux kernel development is continuous and at a rapid pace, never
+stopping to slow down. As such, the kernel developers find bugs in
+current interfaces, or figure out a better way to do things. If they do
+that, they then fix the current interfaces to work better. When they do
+so, function names may change, structures may grow or shrink, and
+function parameters may be reworked. If this happens, all of the
+instances of where this interface is used within the kernel are fixed up
+at the same time, ensuring that everything continues to work properly.
+
+As a specific examples of this, the in-kernel USB interfaces have
+undergone at least three different reworks over the lifetime of this
+subsystem. These reworks were done to address a number of different
+issues:
+
+ - A change from a synchronous model of data streams to an asynchronous
+ one. This reduced the complexity of a number of drivers and
+ increased the throughput of all USB drivers such that we are now
+ running almost all USB devices at their maximum speed possible.
+ - A change was made in the way data packets were allocated from the
+ USB core by USB drivers so that all drivers now needed to provide
+ more information to the USB core to fix a number of documented
+ deadlocks.
+
+This is in stark contrast to a number of closed source operating systems
+which have had to maintain their older USB interfaces over time. This
+provides the ability for new developers to accidentally use the old
+interfaces and do things in improper ways, causing the stability of the
+operating system to suffer.
+
+In both of these instances, all developers agreed that these were
+important changes that needed to be made, and they were made, with
+relatively little pain. If Linux had to ensure that it will preserve a
+stable source interface, a new interface would have been created, and
+the older, broken one would have had to be maintained over time, leading
+to extra work for the USB developers. Since all Linux USB developers do
+their work on their own time, asking programmers to do extra work for no
+gain, for free, is not a possibility.
+
+Security issues are also very important for Linux. When a
+security issue is found, it is fixed in a very short amount of time. A
+number of times this has caused internal kernel interfaces to be
+reworked to prevent the security problem from occurring. When this
+happens, all drivers that use the interfaces were also fixed at the
+same time, ensuring that the security problem was fixed and could not
+come back at some future time accidentally. If the internal interfaces
+were not allowed to change, fixing this kind of security problem and
+insuring that it could not happen again would not be possible.
+
+Kernel interfaces are cleaned up over time. If there is no one using a
+current interface, it is deleted. This ensures that the kernel remains
+as small as possible, and that all potential interfaces are tested as
+well as they can be (unused interfaces are pretty much impossible to
+test for validity.)
+
+
+What to do
+----------
+
+So, if you have a Linux kernel driver that is not in the main kernel
+tree, what are you, a developer, supposed to do? Releasing a binary
+driver for every different kernel version for every distribution is a
+nightmare, and trying to keep up with an ever changing kernel interface
+is also a rough job.
+
+Simple, get your kernel driver into the main kernel tree (remember we are
+talking about drivers released under a GPL-compatible license here, if your
+code doesn't fall under this category, good luck, you are on your own here,
+you leech). If your driver is in the tree, and a kernel interface changes,
+it will be fixed up by the person who did the kernel change in the first
+place. This ensures that your driver is always buildable, and works over
+time, with very little effort on your part.
+
+The very good side effects of having your driver in the main kernel tree
+are:
+
+ - The quality of the driver will rise as the maintenance costs (to the
+ original developer) will decrease.
+ - Other developers will add features to your driver.
+ - Other people will find and fix bugs in your driver.
+ - Other people will find tuning opportunities in your driver.
+ - Other people will update the driver for you when external interface
+ changes require it.
+ - The driver automatically gets shipped in all Linux distributions
+ without having to ask the distros to add it.
+
+As Linux supports a larger number of different devices "out of the box"
+than any other operating system, and it supports these devices on more
+different processor architectures than any other operating system, this
+proven type of development model must be doing something right :)
+
+
+
+------
+
+Thanks to Randy Dunlap, Andrew Morton, David Brownell, Hanna Linder,
+Robert Love, and Nishanth Aravamudan for their review and comments on
+early drafts of this paper.