summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/Documentation/infiniband/user_verbs.rst
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorDaniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>2024-04-07 18:49:45 +0000
committerDaniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>2024-04-07 18:49:45 +0000
commit2c3c1048746a4622d8c89a29670120dc8fab93c4 (patch)
tree848558de17fb3008cdf4d861b01ac7781903ce39 /Documentation/infiniband/user_verbs.rst
parentInitial commit. (diff)
downloadlinux-2c3c1048746a4622d8c89a29670120dc8fab93c4.tar.xz
linux-2c3c1048746a4622d8c89a29670120dc8fab93c4.zip
Adding upstream version 6.1.76.upstream/6.1.76upstream
Signed-off-by: Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/infiniband/user_verbs.rst')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/infiniband/user_verbs.rst75
1 files changed, 75 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/infiniband/user_verbs.rst b/Documentation/infiniband/user_verbs.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..8ddc4b1cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/infiniband/user_verbs.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,75 @@
+======================
+Userspace verbs access
+======================
+
+ The ib_uverbs module, built by enabling CONFIG_INFINIBAND_USER_VERBS,
+ enables direct userspace access to IB hardware via "verbs," as
+ described in chapter 11 of the InfiniBand Architecture Specification.
+
+ To use the verbs, the libibverbs library, available from
+ https://github.com/linux-rdma/rdma-core, is required. libibverbs contains a
+ device-independent API for using the ib_uverbs interface.
+ libibverbs also requires appropriate device-dependent kernel and
+ userspace driver for your InfiniBand hardware. For example, to use
+ a Mellanox HCA, you will need the ib_mthca kernel module and the
+ libmthca userspace driver be installed.
+
+User-kernel communication
+=========================
+
+ Userspace communicates with the kernel for slow path, resource
+ management operations via the /dev/infiniband/uverbsN character
+ devices. Fast path operations are typically performed by writing
+ directly to hardware registers mmap()ed into userspace, with no
+ system call or context switch into the kernel.
+
+ Commands are sent to the kernel via write()s on these device files.
+ The ABI is defined in drivers/infiniband/include/ib_user_verbs.h.
+ The structs for commands that require a response from the kernel
+ contain a 64-bit field used to pass a pointer to an output buffer.
+ Status is returned to userspace as the return value of the write()
+ system call.
+
+Resource management
+===================
+
+ Since creation and destruction of all IB resources is done by
+ commands passed through a file descriptor, the kernel can keep track
+ of which resources are attached to a given userspace context. The
+ ib_uverbs module maintains idr tables that are used to translate
+ between kernel pointers and opaque userspace handles, so that kernel
+ pointers are never exposed to userspace and userspace cannot trick
+ the kernel into following a bogus pointer.
+
+ This also allows the kernel to clean up when a process exits and
+ prevent one process from touching another process's resources.
+
+Memory pinning
+==============
+
+ Direct userspace I/O requires that memory regions that are potential
+ I/O targets be kept resident at the same physical address. The
+ ib_uverbs module manages pinning and unpinning memory regions via
+ get_user_pages() and put_page() calls. It also accounts for the
+ amount of memory pinned in the process's pinned_vm, and checks that
+ unprivileged processes do not exceed their RLIMIT_MEMLOCK limit.
+
+ Pages that are pinned multiple times are counted each time they are
+ pinned, so the value of pinned_vm may be an overestimate of the
+ number of pages pinned by a process.
+
+/dev files
+==========
+
+ To create the appropriate character device files automatically with
+ udev, a rule like::
+
+ KERNEL=="uverbs*", NAME="infiniband/%k"
+
+ can be used. This will create device nodes named::
+
+ /dev/infiniband/uverbs0
+
+ and so on. Since the InfiniBand userspace verbs should be safe for
+ use by non-privileged processes, it may be useful to add an
+ appropriate MODE or GROUP to the udev rule.