net: dsa: implement auto-normalization of MTU for bridge hardware datapath

Many switches don't have an explicit knob for configuring the MTU
(maximum transmission unit per interface).  Instead, they do the
length-based packet admission checks on the ingress interface, for
reasons that are easy to understand (why would you accept a packet in
the queuing subsystem if you know you're going to drop it anyway).

So it is actually the MRU that these switches permit configuring.

In Linux there only exists the IFLA_MTU netlink attribute and the
associated dev_set_mtu function. The comments like to play blind and say
that it's changing the "maximum transfer unit", which is to say that
there isn't any directionality in the meaning of the MTU word. So that
is the interpretation that this patch is giving to things: MTU == MRU.

When 2 interfaces having different MTUs are bridged, the bridge driver
MTU auto-adjustment logic kicks in: what br_mtu_auto_adjust() does is it
adjusts the MTU of the bridge net device itself (and not that of the
slave net devices) to the minimum value of all slave interfaces, in
order for forwarded packets to not exceed the MTU regardless of the
interface they are received and send on.

The idea behind this behavior, and why the slave MTUs are not adjusted,
is that normal termination from Linux over the L2 forwarding domain
should happen over the bridge net device, which _is_ properly limited by
the minimum MTU. And termination over individual slave devices is
possible even if those are bridged. But that is not "forwarding", so
there's no reason to do normalization there, since only a single
interface sees that packet.

The problem with those switches that can only control the MRU is with
the offloaded data path, where a packet received on an interface with
MRU 9000 would still be forwarded to an interface with MRU 1500. And the
br_mtu_auto_adjust() function does not really help, since the MTU
configured on the bridge net device is ignored.

In order to enforce the de-facto MTU == MRU rule for these switches, we
need to do MTU normalization, which means: in order for no packet larger
than the MTU configured on this port to be sent, then we need to limit
the MRU on all ports that this packet could possibly come from. AKA
since we are configuring the MRU via MTU, it means that all ports within
a bridge forwarding domain should have the same MTU.

And that is exactly what this patch is trying to do.

>From an implementation perspective, we try to follow the intent of the
user, otherwise there is a risk that we might livelock them (they try to
change the MTU on an already-bridged interface, but we just keep
changing it back in an attempt to keep the MTU normalized). So the MTU
that the bridge is normalized to is either:

 - The most recently changed one:

   ip link set dev swp0 master br0
   ip link set dev swp1 master br0
   ip link set dev swp0 mtu 1400

   This sequence will make swp1 inherit MTU 1400 from swp0.

 - The one of the most recently added interface to the bridge:

   ip link set dev swp0 master br0
   ip link set dev swp1 mtu 1400
   ip link set dev swp1 master br0

   The above sequence will make swp0 inherit MTU 1400 as well.

Suggested-by: Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Vladimir Oltean <vladimir.oltean@nxp.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/net/dsa/dsa2.c b/net/dsa/dsa2.c
index e7c30b472034..9a271a58a41d 100644
--- a/net/dsa/dsa2.c
+++ b/net/dsa/dsa2.c
@@ -18,8 +18,8 @@
 
 #include "dsa_priv.h"
 
-static LIST_HEAD(dsa_tree_list);
 static DEFINE_MUTEX(dsa2_mutex);
+LIST_HEAD(dsa_tree_list);
 
 static const struct devlink_ops dsa_devlink_ops = {
 };