• Vladimir Oltean's avatar
    net: dsa: tag_ocelot: create separate tagger for Seville · 7c4bb540
    Vladimir Oltean authored
    The ocelot tagger is a hot mess currently, it relies on memory
    initialized by the attached driver for basic frame transmission.
    This is against all that DSA tagging protocols stand for, which is that
    the transmission and reception of a DSA-tagged frame, the data path,
    should be independent from the switch control path, because the tag
    protocol is in principle hot-pluggable and reusable across switches
    (even if in practice it wasn't until very recently). But if another
    driver like dsa_loop wants to make use of tag_ocelot, it couldn't.
    
    This was done to have common code between Felix and Ocelot, which have
    one bit difference in the frame header format. Quoting from commit
    67c24049 ("net: dsa: felix: create a template for the DSA tags on
    xmit"):
    
        Other alternatives have been analyzed, such as:
        - Create a separate tag_seville.c: too much code duplication for just 1
          bit field difference.
        - Create a separate DSA_TAG_PROTO_SEVILLE under tag_ocelot.c, just like
          tag_brcm.c, which would have a separate .xmit function. Again, too
          much code duplication for just 1 bit field difference.
        - Allocate the template from the init function of the tag_ocelot.c
          module, instead of from the driver: couldn't figure out a method of
          accessing the correct port template corresponding to the correct
          tagger in the .xmit function.
    
    The really interesting part is that Seville should have had its own
    tagging protocol defined - it is not compatible on the wire with Ocelot,
    even for that single bit. In principle, a packet generated by
    DSA_TAG_PROTO_OCELOT when booted on NXP LS1028A would look in a certain
    way, but when booted on NXP T1040 it would look differently. The reverse
    is also true: a packet generated by a Seville switch would be
    interpreted incorrectly by Wireshark if it was told it was generated by
    an Ocelot switch.
    
    Actually things are a bit more nuanced. If we concentrate only on the
    DSA tag, what I said above is true, but Ocelot/Seville also support an
    optional DSA tag prefix, which can be short or long, and it is possible
    to distinguish the two taggers based on an integer constant put in that
    prefix. Nonetheless, creating a separate tagger is still justified,
    since the tag prefix is optional, and without it, there is again no way
    to distinguish.
    
    Claiming backwards binary compatibility is a bit more tough, since I've
    already changed the format of tag_ocelot once, in commit 5124197c
    ("net: dsa: tag_ocelot: use a short prefix on both ingress and egress").
    Therefore I am not very concerned with treating this as a bugfix and
    backporting it to stable kernels (which would be another mess due to the
    fact that there would be lots of conflicts with the other DSA_TAG_PROTO*
    definitions). It's just simpler to say that the string values of the
    taggers have ABI value starting with kernel 5.12, which will be when the
    changing of tag protocol via /sys/class/net/<dsa-master>/dsa/tagging
    goes live.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarVladimir Oltean <vladimir.oltean@nxp.com>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarFlorian Fainelli <f.fainelli@gmail.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
    7c4bb540
felix.h 1.71 KB