nvme-tcp: allow selecting the network interface for connections

In our application, we need a way to force TCP connections to go out a
specific IP interface instead of letting Linux select the interface
based on the routing tables.

Add the 'host-iface' option to allow specifying the interface to use.
When the option host-iface is specified, the driver uses the specified
interface to set the option SO_BINDTODEVICE on the TCP socket before
connecting.

This new option is needed in addtion to the existing host-traddr for
the following reasons:

Specifying an IP interface by its associated IP address is less
intuitive than specifying the actual interface name and, in some cases,
simply doesn't work. That's because the association between interfaces
and IP addresses is not predictable. IP addresses can be changed or can
change by themselves over time (e.g. DHCP). Interface names are
predictable [1] and will persist over time. Consider the following
configuration.

1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state ...
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 100.0.0.100/24 scope global lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: enp0s3: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc ...
    link/ether 08:00:27:21:65:ec brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 100.0.0.100/24 scope global enp0s3
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: enp0s8: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc ...
    link/ether 08:00:27:4f:95:5c brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 100.0.0.100/24 scope global enp0s8
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

The above is a VM that I configured with the same IP address
(100.0.0.100) on all interfaces. Doing a reverse lookup to identify the
unique interface associated with 100.0.0.100 does not work here. And
this is why the option host_iface is required. I understand that the
above config does not represent a standard host system, but I'm using
this to prove a point: "We can never know how users will configure
their systems". By te way, The above configuration is perfectly fine
by Linux.

The current TCP implementation for host_traddr performs a
bind()-before-connect(). This is a common construct to set the source
IP address on a TCP socket before connecting. This has no effect on how
Linux selects the interface for the connection. That's because Linux
uses the Weak End System model as described in RFC1122 [2]. On the other
hand, setting the Source IP Address has benefits and should be supported
by linux-nvme. In fact, setting the Source IP Address is a mandatory
FedGov requirement (e.g. connection to a RADIUS/TACACS+ server).
Consider the following configuration.

$ ip addr list dev enp0s8
3: enp0s8: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc ...
    link/ether 08:00:27:4f:95:5c brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.56.101/24 brd 192.168.56.255 scope global enp0s8
       valid_lft 426sec preferred_lft 426sec
    inet 192.168.56.102/24 scope global secondary enp0s8
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet 192.168.56.103/24 scope global secondary enp0s8
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet 192.168.56.104/24 scope global secondary enp0s8
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

Here we can see that several addresses are associated with interface
enp0s8. By default, Linux always selects the default IP address,
192.168.56.101, as the source address when connecting over interface
enp0s8. Some users, however, want the ability to specify a different
source address (e.g., 192.168.56.102, 192.168.56.103, ...). The option
host_traddr can be used as-is to perform this function.

In conclusion, I believe that we need 2 options for TCP connections.
One that can be used to specify an interface (host-iface). And one that
can be used to set the source address (host-traddr). Users should be
allowed to use one or the other, or both, or none. Of course, the
documentation for host_traddr will need some clarification. It should
state that when used for TCP connection, this option only sets the
source address. And the documentation for host_iface should say that
this option is only available for TCP connections.

References:
[1] https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/PredictableNetworkInterfaceNames/
[2] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1122

Tested both IPv4 and IPv6 connections.

Signed-off-by: Martin Belanger <martin.belanger@dell.com>
Reviewed-by: Sagi Grimberg <sagi@grimberg.me>
Reviewed-by: Hannes Reinecke <hare@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>

1 files changed, 5 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/drivers/nvme/host/core.c b/drivers/nvme/host/core.c
index e7441ccaa8db..bb8b242594f9 100644
--- a/drivers/nvme/host/core.c
+++ b/drivers/nvme/host/core.c
@@ -4134,6 +4134,11 @@ static int nvme_class_uevent(struct device *dev, struct kobj_uevent_env *env)
 
 		ret = add_uevent_var(env, "NVME_HOST_TRADDR=%s",
 				opts->host_traddr ?: "none");
+		if (ret)
+			return ret;
+
+		ret = add_uevent_var(env, "NVME_HOST_IFACE=%s",
+				opts->host_iface ?: "none");
 	}
 	return ret;
 }