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+
+============
+MSG_ZEROCOPY
+============
+
+Intro
+=====
+
+The MSG_ZEROCOPY flag enables copy avoidance for socket send calls.
+The feature is currently implemented for TCP sockets.
+
+
+Opportunity and Caveats
+-----------------------
+
+Copying large buffers between user process and kernel can be
+expensive. Linux supports various interfaces that eschew copying,
+such as sendpage and splice. The MSG_ZEROCOPY flag extends the
+underlying copy avoidance mechanism to common socket send calls.
+
+Copy avoidance is not a free lunch. As implemented, with page pinning,
+it replaces per byte copy cost with page accounting and completion
+notification overhead. As a result, MSG_ZEROCOPY is generally only
+effective at writes over around 10 KB.
+
+Page pinning also changes system call semantics. It temporarily shares
+the buffer between process and network stack. Unlike with copying, the
+process cannot immediately overwrite the buffer after system call
+return without possibly modifying the data in flight. Kernel integrity
+is not affected, but a buggy program can possibly corrupt its own data
+stream.
+
+The kernel returns a notification when it is safe to modify data.
+Converting an existing application to MSG_ZEROCOPY is not always as
+trivial as just passing the flag, then.
+
+
+More Info
+---------
+
+Much of this document was derived from a longer paper presented at
+netdev 2.1. For more in-depth information see that paper and talk,
+the excellent reporting over at LWN.net or read the original code.
+
+ paper, slides, video
+ https://netdevconf.org/2.1/session.html?debruijn
+
+ LWN article
+ https://lwn.net/Articles/726917/
+
+ patchset
+ [PATCH net-next v4 0/9] socket sendmsg MSG_ZEROCOPY
+ http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20170803202945.70750-1-willemdebruijn.kernel@gmail.com
+
+
+Interface
+=========
+
+Passing the MSG_ZEROCOPY flag is the most obvious step to enable copy
+avoidance, but not the only one.
+
+Socket Setup
+------------
+
+The kernel is permissive when applications pass undefined flags to the
+send system call. By default it simply ignores these. To avoid enabling
+copy avoidance mode for legacy processes that accidentally already pass
+this flag, a process must first signal intent by setting a socket option:
+
+::
+
+ if (setsockopt(fd, SOL_SOCKET, SO_ZEROCOPY, &one, sizeof(one)))
+ error(1, errno, "setsockopt zerocopy");
+
+
+Transmission
+------------
+
+The change to send (or sendto, sendmsg, sendmmsg) itself is trivial.
+Pass the new flag.
+
+::
+
+ ret = send(fd, buf, sizeof(buf), MSG_ZEROCOPY);
+
+A zerocopy failure will return -1 with errno ENOBUFS. This happens if
+the socket option was not set, the socket exceeds its optmem limit or
+the user exceeds its ulimit on locked pages.
+
+
+Mixing copy avoidance and copying
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Many workloads have a mixture of large and small buffers. Because copy
+avoidance is more expensive than copying for small packets, the
+feature is implemented as a flag. It is safe to mix calls with the flag
+with those without.
+
+
+Notifications
+-------------
+
+The kernel has to notify the process when it is safe to reuse a
+previously passed buffer. It queues completion notifications on the
+socket error queue, akin to the transmit timestamping interface.
+
+The notification itself is a simple scalar value. Each socket
+maintains an internal unsigned 32-bit counter. Each send call with
+MSG_ZEROCOPY that successfully sends data increments the counter. The
+counter is not incremented on failure or if called with length zero.
+The counter counts system call invocations, not bytes. It wraps after
+UINT_MAX calls.
+
+
+Notification Reception
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+The below snippet demonstrates the API. In the simplest case, each
+send syscall is followed by a poll and recvmsg on the error queue.
+
+Reading from the error queue is always a non-blocking operation. The
+poll call is there to block until an error is outstanding. It will set
+POLLERR in its output flags. That flag does not have to be set in the
+events field. Errors are signaled unconditionally.
+
+::
+
+ pfd.fd = fd;
+ pfd.events = 0;
+ if (poll(&pfd, 1, -1) != 1 || pfd.revents & POLLERR == 0)
+ error(1, errno, "poll");
+
+ ret = recvmsg(fd, &msg, MSG_ERRQUEUE);
+ if (ret == -1)
+ error(1, errno, "recvmsg");
+
+ read_notification(msg);
+
+The example is for demonstration purpose only. In practice, it is more
+efficient to not wait for notifications, but read without blocking
+every couple of send calls.
+
+Notifications can be processed out of order with other operations on
+the socket. A socket that has an error queued would normally block
+other operations until the error is read. Zerocopy notifications have
+a zero error code, however, to not block send and recv calls.
+
+
+Notification Batching
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Multiple outstanding packets can be read at once using the recvmmsg
+call. This is often not needed. In each message the kernel returns not
+a single value, but a range. It coalesces consecutive notifications
+while one is outstanding for reception on the error queue.
+
+When a new notification is about to be queued, it checks whether the
+new value extends the range of the notification at the tail of the
+queue. If so, it drops the new notification packet and instead increases
+the range upper value of the outstanding notification.
+
+For protocols that acknowledge data in-order, like TCP, each
+notification can be squashed into the previous one, so that no more
+than one notification is outstanding at any one point.
+
+Ordered delivery is the common case, but not guaranteed. Notifications
+may arrive out of order on retransmission and socket teardown.
+
+
+Notification Parsing
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+The below snippet demonstrates how to parse the control message: the
+read_notification() call in the previous snippet. A notification
+is encoded in the standard error format, sock_extended_err.
+
+The level and type fields in the control data are protocol family
+specific, IP_RECVERR or IPV6_RECVERR.
+
+Error origin is the new type SO_EE_ORIGIN_ZEROCOPY. ee_errno is zero,
+as explained before, to avoid blocking read and write system calls on
+the socket.
+
+The 32-bit notification range is encoded as [ee_info, ee_data]. This
+range is inclusive. Other fields in the struct must be treated as
+undefined, bar for ee_code, as discussed below.
+
+::
+
+ struct sock_extended_err *serr;
+ struct cmsghdr *cm;
+
+ cm = CMSG_FIRSTHDR(msg);
+ if (cm->cmsg_level != SOL_IP &&
+ cm->cmsg_type != IP_RECVERR)
+ error(1, 0, "cmsg");
+
+ serr = (void *) CMSG_DATA(cm);
+ if (serr->ee_errno != 0 ||
+ serr->ee_origin != SO_EE_ORIGIN_ZEROCOPY)
+ error(1, 0, "serr");
+
+ printf("completed: %u..%u\n", serr->ee_info, serr->ee_data);
+
+
+Deferred copies
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Passing flag MSG_ZEROCOPY is a hint to the kernel to apply copy
+avoidance, and a contract that the kernel will queue a completion
+notification. It is not a guarantee that the copy is elided.
+
+Copy avoidance is not always feasible. Devices that do not support
+scatter-gather I/O cannot send packets made up of kernel generated
+protocol headers plus zerocopy user data. A packet may need to be
+converted to a private copy of data deep in the stack, say to compute
+a checksum.
+
+In all these cases, the kernel returns a completion notification when
+it releases its hold on the shared pages. That notification may arrive
+before the (copied) data is fully transmitted. A zerocopy completion
+notification is not a transmit completion notification, therefore.
+
+Deferred copies can be more expensive than a copy immediately in the
+system call, if the data is no longer warm in the cache. The process
+also incurs notification processing cost for no benefit. For this
+reason, the kernel signals if data was completed with a copy, by
+setting flag SO_EE_CODE_ZEROCOPY_COPIED in field ee_code on return.
+A process may use this signal to stop passing flag MSG_ZEROCOPY on
+subsequent requests on the same socket.
+
+
+Implementation
+==============
+
+Loopback
+--------
+
+Data sent to local sockets can be queued indefinitely if the receive
+process does not read its socket. Unbound notification latency is not
+acceptable. For this reason all packets generated with MSG_ZEROCOPY
+that are looped to a local socket will incur a deferred copy. This
+includes looping onto packet sockets (e.g., tcpdump) and tun devices.
+
+
+Testing
+=======
+
+More realistic example code can be found in the kernel source under
+tools/testing/selftests/net/msg_zerocopy.c.
+
+Be cognizant of the loopback constraint. The test can be run between
+a pair of hosts. But if run between a local pair of processes, for
+instance when run with msg_zerocopy.sh between a veth pair across
+namespaces, the test will not show any improvement. For testing, the
+loopback restriction can be temporarily relaxed by making
+skb_orphan_frags_rx identical to skb_orphan_frags.
+