linux/Documentation/sysctl
Eric Dumazet 960fb622f8 net: provide a per host RSS key generic infrastructure
RSS (Receive Side Scaling) typically uses Toeplitz hash and a 40 or 52 bytes
RSS key.

Some drivers use a constant (and well known key), some drivers use a random
key per port, making bonding setups hard to tune. Well known keys increase
attack surface, considering that number of queues is usually a power of two.

This patch provides infrastructure to help drivers doing the right thing.

netdev_rss_key_fill() should be used by drivers to initialize their RSS key,
even if they provide ethtool -X support to let user redefine the key later.

A new /proc/sys/net/core/netdev_rss_key file can be used to get the host
RSS key even for drivers not providing ethtool -x support, in case some
applications want to precisely setup flows to match some RX queues.

Tested:

myhost:~# cat /proc/sys/net/core/netdev_rss_key
11:63:99:bb:79:fb:a5:a7:07:45:b2:20:bf:02:42:2d:08:1a:dd:19:2b:6b:23:ac:56:28:9d:70:c3:ac:e8:16:4b:b7:c1:10:53:a4:78:41:36:40:74:b6:15:ca:27:44:aa:b3:4d:72

myhost:~# ethtool -x eth0
RX flow hash indirection table for eth0 with 8 RX ring(s):
    0:      0     1     2     3     4     5     6     7
RSS hash key:
11:63:99:bb:79:fb:a5:a7:07:45:b2:20:bf:02:42:2d:08:1a:dd:19:2b:6b:23:ac:56:28:9d:70:c3:ac:e8:16:4b:b7:c1:10:53:a4:78:41

Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
2014-11-16 15:59:11 -05:00
..
00-INDEX sysctl: remove obsolete comments 2011-01-13 08:03:18 -08:00
abi.txt
fs.txt Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs 2012-08-01 10:26:23 -07:00
kernel.txt coredump: add %i/%I in core_pattern to report the tid of the crashed thread 2014-10-14 02:18:21 +02:00
net.txt net: provide a per host RSS key generic infrastructure 2014-11-16 15:59:11 -05:00
README
sunrpc.txt
vm.txt mm, pcp: allow restoring percpu_pagelist_fraction default 2014-06-23 16:47:43 -07:00

Documentation for /proc/sys/		kernel version 2.2.10
	(c) 1998, 1999,  Rik van Riel <riel@nl.linux.org>

'Why', I hear you ask, 'would anyone even _want_ documentation
for them sysctl files? If anybody really needs it, it's all in
the source...'

Well, this documentation is written because some people either
don't know they need to tweak something, or because they don't
have the time or knowledge to read the source code.

Furthermore, the programmers who built sysctl have built it to
be actually used, not just for the fun of programming it :-)

==============================================================

Legal blurb:

As usual, there are two main things to consider:
1. you get what you pay for
2. it's free

The consequences are that I won't guarantee the correctness of
this document, and if you come to me complaining about how you
screwed up your system because of wrong documentation, I won't
feel sorry for you. I might even laugh at you...

But of course, if you _do_ manage to screw up your system using
only the sysctl options used in this file, I'd like to hear of
it. Not only to have a great laugh, but also to make sure that
you're the last RTFMing person to screw up.

In short, e-mail your suggestions, corrections and / or horror
stories to: <riel@nl.linux.org>

Rik van Riel.

==============================================================

Introduction:

Sysctl is a means of configuring certain aspects of the kernel
at run-time, and the /proc/sys/ directory is there so that you
don't even need special tools to do it!
In fact, there are only four things needed to use these config
facilities:
- a running Linux system
- root access
- common sense (this is especially hard to come by these days)
- knowledge of what all those values mean

As a quick 'ls /proc/sys' will show, the directory consists of
several (arch-dependent?) subdirs. Each subdir is mainly about
one part of the kernel, so you can do configuration on a piece
by piece basis, or just some 'thematic frobbing'.

The subdirs are about:
abi/		execution domains & personalities
debug/		<empty>
dev/		device specific information (eg dev/cdrom/info)
fs/		specific filesystems
		filehandle, inode, dentry and quota tuning
		binfmt_misc <Documentation/binfmt_misc.txt>
kernel/		global kernel info / tuning
		miscellaneous stuff
net/		networking stuff, for documentation look in:
		<Documentation/networking/>
proc/		<empty>
sunrpc/		SUN Remote Procedure Call (NFS)
vm/		memory management tuning
		buffer and cache management

These are the subdirs I have on my system. There might be more
or other subdirs in another setup. If you see another dir, I'd
really like to hear about it :-)