It is possible to kill PTP on a DSA switch completely and absolutely,
until a reboot, with a simple command:
tcpdump -i eth2 -j adapter_unsynced
where eth2 is the switch's DSA master.
Why? Well, in short, the PTP API in place today is a bit rudimentary and
relies on applications to retrieve the TX timestamps by polling the
error queue and looking at the cmsg structure. But there is no timestamp
identification of any sorts (except whether it's HW or SW), you don't
know how many more timestamps are there to come, which one is this one,
from whom it is, etc. In other words, the SO_TIMESTAMPING API is
fundamentally limited in that you can get a single HW timestamp from the
stack.
And the "-j adapter_unsynced" flag of tcpdump enables hardware
timestamping.
So let's imagine what happens when the DSA master decides it wants to
deliver TX timestamps to the skb's socket too:
- The timestamp that the user space sees is taken by the DSA master.
Whereas the RX timestamp will eventually be overwritten by the DSA
switch. So the RX and TX timestamps will be in different time bases
(aka garbage).
- The user space applications have no way to deal with the second (real)
TX timestamp finally delivered by the DSA switch, or even to know to
wait for it.
Take ptp4l from the linuxptp project, for example. This is its behavior
after running tcpdump, before the patch:
ptp4l[172]: [6469.594] Unexpected data on socket err queue:
ptp4l[172]: [6469.693] rms 8 max 16 freq -21257 +/- 11 delay 748 +/- 0
ptp4l[172]: [6469.711] Unexpected data on socket err queue:
ptp4l[172]: 0020 00 00 00 1f 7b ff fe 63 02 48 00 03 aa 05 00 fd
ptp4l[172]: 0030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
ptp4l[172]: [6469.721] Unexpected data on socket err queue:
ptp4l[172]: 0000 01 80 c2 00 00 0e 00 1f 7b 63 02 48 88 f7 10 02
ptp4l[172]: 0010 00 2c 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
ptp4l[172]: 0020 00 00 00 1f 7b ff fe 63 02 48 00 01 c6 b1 00 fd
ptp4l[172]: 0030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
ptp4l[172]: [6469.838] Unexpected data on socket err queue:
ptp4l[172]: 0000 01 80 c2 00 00 0e 00 1f 7b 63 02 48 88 f7 10 02
ptp4l[172]: 0010 00 2c 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
ptp4l[172]: 0020 00 00 00 1f 7b ff fe 63 02 48 00 03 aa 06 00 fd
ptp4l[172]: 0030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
ptp4l[172]: [6469.848] Unexpected data on socket err queue:
ptp4l[172]: 0000 01 80 c2 00 00 0e 00 1f 7b 63 02 48 88 f7 13 02
ptp4l[172]: 0010 00 36 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
ptp4l[172]: 0020 00 00 00 1f 7b ff fe 63 02 48 00 04 1a 45 05 7f
ptp4l[172]: 0030 00 00 5e 05 41 32 27 c2 1a 68 00 04 9f ff fe 05
ptp4l[172]: 0040 de 06 00 01
ptp4l[172]: [6469.855] Unexpected data on socket err queue:
ptp4l[172]: 0000 01 80 c2 00 00 0e 00 1f 7b 63 02 48 88 f7 10 02
ptp4l[172]: 0010 00 2c 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
ptp4l[172]: 0020 00 00 00 1f 7b ff fe 63 02 48 00 01 c6 b2 00 fd
ptp4l[172]: 0030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
ptp4l[172]: [6469.974] Unexpected data on socket err queue:
ptp4l[172]: 0000 01 80 c2 00 00 0e 00 1f 7b 63 02 48 88 f7 10 02
ptp4l[172]: 0010 00 2c 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
ptp4l[172]: 0020 00 00 00 1f 7b ff fe 63 02 48 00 03 aa 07 00 fd
ptp4l[172]: 0030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
The ptp4l program itself is heavily patched to show this (more details
here [0]). Otherwise, by default it just hangs.
On the other hand, with the DSA patch to disallow HW timestamping
applied:
tcpdump -i eth2 -j adapter_unsynced
tcpdump: SIOCSHWTSTAMP failed: Device or resource busy
So it is a fact of life that PTP timestamping on the DSA master is
incompatible with timestamping on the switch MAC, at least with the
current API. And if the switch supports PTP, taking the timestamps from
the switch MAC is highly preferable anyway, due to the fact that those
don't contain the queuing latencies of the switch. So just disallow PTP
on the DSA master if there is any PTP-capable switch attached.
[0]: https://sourceforge.net/p/linuxptp/mailman/message/36880648/
Fixes: 0336369d3a ("net: dsa: forward hardware timestamping ioctls to switch driver")
Signed-off-by: Vladimir Oltean <olteanv@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Richard Cochran <richardcochran@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
f685e609a3