Re: [PATCH 0/5] add initial io_uring_cmd support for sockets

From: David Ahern
Date: Tue Apr 11 2023 - 11:11:16 EST


On 4/11/23 8:41 AM, Jens Axboe wrote:
> On 4/11/23 8:36?AM, David Ahern wrote:
>> On 4/11/23 6:00 AM, Breno Leitao wrote:
>>> I am not sure if avoiding io_uring details in network code is possible.
>>>
>>> The "struct proto"->uring_cmd callback implementation (tcp_uring_cmd()
>>> in the TCP case) could be somewhere else, such as in the io_uring/
>>> directory, but, I think it might be cleaner if these implementations are
>>> closer to function assignment (in the network subsystem).
>>>
>>> And this function (tcp_uring_cmd() for instance) is the one that I am
>>> planning to map io_uring CMDs to ioctls. Such as SOCKET_URING_OP_SIOCINQ
>>> -> SIOCINQ.
>>>
>>> Please let me know if you have any other idea in mind.
>>
>> I am not convinced that this io_uring_cmd is needed. This is one
>> in-kernel subsystem calling into another, and there are APIs for that.
>> All of this set is ioctl based and as Willem noted a little refactoring
>> separates the get_user/put_user out so that in-kernel can call can be
>> made with existing ops.
>
> How do you want to wire it up then? We can't use fops->unlocked_ioctl()
> obviously, and we already have ->uring_cmd() for this purpose.
>
> I do think the right thing to do is have a common helper that returns
> whatever value you want (or sets it), and split the ioctl parts into a
> wrapper around that that simply copies in/out as needed. Then
> ->uring_cmd() could call that, or you could some exported function that
> does supports that.
>
> This works for the basic cases, though I do suspect we'll want to go
> down the ->uring_cmd() at some point for more advanced cases or cases
> that cannot sanely be done in an ioctl fashion.
>

My meta point is that there are uapis today to return this information
to applications (and I suspect this is just the start of more networking
changes - both data retrieval and adjusting settings). io_uring is
wanting to do this on behalf of the application without a syscall. That
makes io_uring yet another subsystem / component managing a socket. Any
change to the networking stack required by io_uring should be usable by
all other in-kernel socket owners or managers. ie., there is no reason
for io_uring specific code here.