Re: [PATCH v6 bpf-next 00/11] Socket migration for SO_REUSEPORT.

[Martin KaFai Lau]

On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 09:22:47AM +0900, Kuniyuki Iwashima wrote:
> The SO_REUSEPORT option allows sockets to listen on the same port and to
> accept connections evenly. However, there is a defect in the current
> implementation [1]. When a SYN packet is received, the connection is tied
> to a listening socket. Accordingly, when the listener is closed, in-flight
> requests during the three-way handshake and child sockets in the accept
> queue are dropped even if other listeners on the same port could accept
> such connections.
> 
> This situation can happen when various server management tools restart
> server (such as nginx) processes. For instance, when we change nginx
> configurations and restart it, it spins up new workers that respect the new
> configuration and closes all listeners on the old workers, resulting in the
> in-flight ACK of 3WHS is responded by RST.
> 
> To avoid such a situation, users have to know deeply how the kernel handles
> SYN packets and implement connection draining by eBPF [2]:
> 
>   1. Stop routing SYN packets to the listener by eBPF.
>   2. Wait for all timers to expire to complete requests
>   3. Accept connections until EAGAIN, then close the listener.
> 
>   or
> 
>   1. Start counting SYN packets and accept syscalls using the eBPF map.
>   2. Stop routing SYN packets.
>   3. Accept connections up to the count, then close the listener.
> 
> In either way, we cannot close a listener immediately. However, ideally,
> the application need not drain the not yet accepted sockets because 3WHS
> and tying a connection to a listener are just the kernel behaviour. The
> root cause is within the kernel, so the issue should be addressed in kernel
> space and should not be visible to user space. This patchset fixes it so
> that users need not take care of kernel implementation and connection
> draining. With this patchset, the kernel redistributes requests and
> connections from a listener to the others in the same reuseport group
> at/after close or shutdown syscalls.
> 
> Although some software does connection draining, there are still merits in
> migration. For some security reasons, such as replacing TLS certificates,
> we may want to apply new settings as soon as possible and/or we may not be
> able to wait for connection draining. The sockets in the accept queue have
> not started application sessions yet. So, if we do not drain such sockets,
> they can be handled by the newer listeners and could have a longer
> lifetime. It is difficult to drain all connections in every case, but we
> can decrease such aborted connections by migration. In that sense,
> migration is always better than draining. 
> 
> Moreover, auto-migration simplifies user space logic and also works well in
> a case where we cannot modify and build a server program to implement the
> workaround.
> 
> Note that the source and destination listeners MUST have the same settings
> at the socket API level; otherwise, applications may face inconsistency and
> cause errors. In such a case, we have to use the eBPF program to select a
> specific listener or to cancel migration.
> 
> Special thanks to Martin KaFai Lau for bouncing ideas and exchanging code
> snippets along the way.
> 
> 
> Link:
>  [1] The SO_REUSEPORT socket option
>  https://lwn.net/Articles/542629/ 
> 
>  [2] Re: [PATCH 1/1] net: Add SO_REUSEPORT_LISTEN_OFF socket option as drain mode
>  https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/1458828813.10868.65.camel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
> 
> 
> Changelog:
>  v6:
>   * Change description in ip-sysctl.rst
>   * Test IPPROTO_TCP before reading tfo_listener
>   * Move reqsk_clone() to inet_connection_sock.c and rename to
>     inet_reqsk_clone()
>   * Pass req->rsk_listener to inet_csk_reqsk_queue_drop() and
>     reqsk_queue_removed() in the migration path of receiving ACK
>   * s/ARG_PTR_TO_SOCKET/PTR_TO_SOCKET/ in sk_reuseport_is_valid_access()
>   * In selftest, use atomic ops to increment global vars, drop ACK by XDP,
>     enable force fastopen, use "skel->bss" instead of "skel->data"
Some commit messages need to be updated: s/reqsk_clone/inet_reqsk_clone/

One thing needs to be addressed in patch 3.

Others lgtm.

Acked-by: Martin KaFai Lau <kafai@xxxxxx>