tcp: enforce receive buffer memory limits by allowing the tcp window to shrink
Under certain circumstances, the tcp receive buffer memory limit set by autotuning (sk_rcvbuf) is increased due to incoming data packets as a result of the window not closing when it should be. This can result in the receive buffer growing all the way up to tcp_rmem[2], even for tcp sessions with a low BDP. To reproduce: Connect a TCP session with the receiver doing nothing and the sender sending small packets (an infinite loop of socket send() with 4 bytes of payload with a sleep of 1 ms in between each send()). This will cause the tcp receive buffer to grow all the way up to tcp_rmem[2]. As a result, a host can have individual tcp sessions with receive buffers of size tcp_rmem[2], and the host itself can reach tcp_mem limits, causing the host to go into tcp memory pressure mode. The fundamental issue is the relationship between the granularity of the window scaling factor and the number of byte ACKed back to the sender. This problem has previously been identified in RFC 7323, appendix F [1]. The Linux kernel currently adheres to never shrinking the window. In addition to the overallocation of memory mentioned above, the current behavior is functionally incorrect, because once tcp_rmem[2] is reached when no remediations remain (i.e. tcp collapse fails to free up any more memory and there are no packets to prune from the out-of-order queue), the receiver will drop in-window packets resulting in retransmissions and an eventual timeout of the tcp session. A receive buffer full condition should instead result in a zero window and an indefinite wait. In practice, this problem is largely hidden for most flows. It is not applicable to mice flows. Elephant flows can send data fast enough to "overrun" the sk_rcvbuf limit (in a single ACK), triggering a zero window. But this problem does show up for other types of flows. Examples are websockets and other type of flows that send small amounts of data spaced apart slightly in time. In these cases, we directly encounter the problem described in [1]. RFC 7323, section 2.4 [2], says there are instances when a retracted window can be offered, and that TCP implementations MUST ensure that they handle a shrinking window, as specified in RFC 1122, section 4.2.2.16 [3]. All prior RFCs on the topic of tcp window management have made clear that sender must accept a shrunk window from the receiver, including RFC 793 [4] and RFC 1323 [5]. This patch implements the functionality to shrink the tcp window when necessary to keep the right edge within the memory limit by autotuning (sk_rcvbuf). This new functionality is enabled with the new sysctl: net.ipv4.tcp_shrink_window Additional information can be found at: https://blog.cloudflare.com/unbounded-memory-usage-by-tcp-for-receive-buffers-and-how-we-fixed-it/ [1] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7323#appendix-F [2] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7323#section-2.4 [3] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1122#page-91 [4] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc793 [5] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1323Signed-off-by:Mike Freemon <mfreemon@cloudflare.com> Reviewed-by:
Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com> Signed-off-by:
David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
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