Re: [PATCH bpf-next] bpf: add bpf_ct_lookup_{tcp,udp}() helpers

[Matt Cover]

On Mon, Jan 20, 2020 at 2:11 PM Daniel Borkmann <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 1/20/20 9:10 PM, Matt Cover wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 20, 2020 at 11:11 AM Matt Cover <werekraken@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 8:05 PM John Fastabend <john.fastabend@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>> Matthew Cover wrote:
> >>>> Allow looking up an nf_conn. This allows eBPF programs to leverage
> >>>> nf_conntrack state for similar purposes to socket state use cases,
> >>>> as provided by the socket lookup helpers. This is particularly
> >>>> useful when nf_conntrack state is locally available, but socket
> >>>> state is not.
> >>>>
> >>>> Signed-off-by: Matthew Cover <matthew.cover@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >>>> ---
> >>>
> >>> Couple coding comments below. Also looks like a couple build errors
> >>> so fix those up. I'm still thinking over this though.
> >>
> >> Thank you for taking the time to look this over. I will be looking
> >> into the build issues.
> >
> > Looks like I missed static inline on a couple functions when
> > nf_conntrack isn't builtin. I'll include the fix in v2.
>
> One of the big issues I'd see with this integration is that literally no-one
> will be able to use it unless they manually recompile their distro kernel with
> ct as builtin instead of module .. Have you considered writing a tcp/udp ct in
> plain bpf? Perhaps would make sense to have some sort of tools/lib/bpf/util/
> with bpf prog library code that can be included.

I don't believe the builtin requirement is permanent. Currently, that
requirement comes from an undefined reference to
nf_conntrack_find_get() during linking. As a future improvement, I am
planning to propose a function pointer which ct_lookup() uses. The
kernel proper would point this to an always NULL stub. nf_conntrack
would populate to the real function when builtin or when loaded as a
module.

If there is a better way to solve the kernel proper using an exported
symbol provided by a module, I'd be happy to hear of it.