The fact that PTP 2-step TX timestamping is broken on DSA switches if
the master also timestamps the same packets is documented by commit
f685e609a3 ("net: dsa: Deny PTP on master if switch supports it").
We attempt to help the users avoid shooting themselves in the foot by
making DSA reject the timestamping ioctls on an interface that is a DSA
master, and the switch tree beneath it contains switches which are aware
of PTP.
The only problem is that there isn't an established way of intercepting
ndo_eth_ioctl calls, so DSA creates avoidable burden upon the network
stack by creating a struct dsa_netdevice_ops with overlaid function
pointers that are manually checked from the relevant call sites. There
used to be 2 such dsa_netdevice_ops, but now, ndo_eth_ioctl is the only
one left.
There is an ongoing effort to migrate driver-visible hardware timestamping
control from the ndo_eth_ioctl() based API to a new ndo_hwtstamp_set()
model, but DSA actively prevents that migration, since dsa_master_ioctl()
is currently coded to manually call the master's legacy ndo_eth_ioctl(),
and so, whenever a network device driver would be converted to the new
API, DSA's restrictions would be circumvented, because any device could
be used as a DSA master.
The established way for unrelated modules to react on a net device event
is via netdevice notifiers. So we create a new notifier which gets
called whenever there is an attempt to change hardware timestamping
settings on a device.
Finally, there is another reason why a netdev notifier will be a good
idea, besides strictly DSA, and this has to do with PHY timestamping.
With ndo_eth_ioctl(), all MAC drivers must manually call
phy_has_hwtstamp() before deciding whether to act upon SIOCSHWTSTAMP,
otherwise they must pass this ioctl to the PHY driver via
phy_mii_ioctl().
With the new ndo_hwtstamp_set() API, it will be desirable to simply not
make any calls into the MAC device driver when timestamping should be
performed at the PHY level.
But there exist drivers, such as the lan966x switch, which need to
install packet traps for PTP regardless of whether they are the layer
that provides the hardware timestamps, or the PHY is. That would be
impossible to support with the new API.
The proposal there, too, is to introduce a netdev notifier which acts as
a better cue for switching drivers to add or remove PTP packet traps,
than ndo_hwtstamp_set(). The one introduced here "almost" works there as
well, except for the fact that packet traps should only be installed if
the PHY driver succeeded to enable hardware timestamping, whereas here,
we need to deny hardware timestamping on the DSA master before it
actually gets enabled. This is why this notifier is called "PRE_", and
the notifier that would get used for PHY timestamping and packet traps
would be called NETDEV_CHANGE_HWTSTAMP. This isn't a new concept, for
example NETDEV_CHANGEUPPER and NETDEV_PRECHANGEUPPER do the same thing.
In expectation of future netlink UAPI, we also pass a non-NULL extack
pointer to the netdev notifier, and we make DSA populate it with an
informative reason for the rejection. To avoid making it go to waste, we
make the ioctl-based dev_set_hwtstamp() create a fake extack and print
the message to the kernel log.
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/20230401191215.tvveoi3lkawgg6g4@skbuf/
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/20230310164451.ls7bbs6pdzs4m6pw@skbuf/
Signed-off-by: Vladimir Oltean <vladimir.oltean@nxp.com>
Reviewed-by: Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>