netdev: add per-queue statistics

The ethtool-nl family does a good job exposing various protocol
related and IEEE/IETF statistics which used to get dumped under
ethtool -S, with creative names. Queue stats don't have a netlink
API, yet, and remain a lion's share of ethtool -S output for new
drivers. Not only is that bad because the names differ driver to
driver but it's also bug-prone. Intuitively drivers try to report
only the stats for active queues, but querying ethtool stats
involves multiple system calls, and the number of stats is
read separately from the stats themselves. Worse still when user
space asks for values of the stats, it doesn't inform the kernel
how big the buffer is. If number of stats increases in the meantime
kernel will overflow user buffer.

Add a netlink API for dumping queue stats. Queue information is
exposed via the netdev-genl family, so add the stats there.
Support per-queue and sum-for-device dumps. Latter will be useful
when subsequent patches add more interesting common stats than
just bytes and packets.

The API does not currently distinguish between HW and SW stats.
The expectation is that the source of the stats will either not
matter much (good packets) or be obvious (skb alloc errors).

Acked-by: Stanislav Fomichev <sdf@google.com>
Reviewed-by: Amritha Nambiar <amritha.nambiar@intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Xuan Zhuo <xuanzhuo@linux.alibaba.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240306195509.1502746-2-kuba@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>

1 files changed, 15 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/networking/statistics.rst b/Documentation/networking/statistics.rst
index 551b3cc29a41..75e017dfa825 100644
--- a/Documentation/networking/statistics.rst
+++ b/Documentation/networking/statistics.rst
@@ -41,6 +41,15 @@ If `-s` is specified once the detailed errors won't be shown.
 
 `ip` supports JSON formatting via the `-j` option.
 
+Queue statistics
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Queue statistics are accessible via the netdev netlink family.
+
+Currently no widely distributed CLI exists to access those statistics.
+Kernel development tools (ynl) can be used to experiment with them,
+see `Documentation/userspace-api/netlink/intro-specs.rst`.
+
 Protocol-specific statistics
 ----------------------------
 
@@ -147,6 +156,12 @@ Statistics are reported both in the responses to link information
 requests (`RTM_GETLINK`) and statistic requests (`RTM_GETSTATS`,
 when `IFLA_STATS_LINK_64` bit is set in the `.filter_mask` of the request).
 
+netdev (netlink)
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+`netdev` generic netlink family allows accessing page pool and per queue
+statistics.
+
 ethtool
 -------