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  • Simon Horman's avatar
    net: Loosen constraints for recalculating checksum in skb_segment() · 1cdbcb79
    Simon Horman authored
    
    
    This is a generic solution to resolve a specific problem that I have observed.
    
    If the encapsulation of an skb changes then ability to offload checksums
    may also change. In particular it may be necessary to perform checksumming
    in software.
    
    An example of such a case is where a non-GRE packet is received but
    is to be encapsulated and transmitted as GRE.
    
    Another example relates to my proposed support for for packets
    that are non-MPLS when received but MPLS when transmitted.
    
    The cost of this change is that the value of the csum variable may be
    checked when it previously was not. In the case where the csum variable is
    true this is pure overhead. In the case where the csum variable is false it
    leads to software checksumming, which I believe also leads to correct
    checksums in transmitted packets for the cases described above.
    
    Further analysis:
    
    This patch relies on the return value of can_checksum_protocol()
    being correct and in turn the return value of skb_network_protocol(),
    used to provide the protocol parameter of can_checksum_protocol(),
    being correct. It also relies on the features passed to skb_segment()
    and in turn to can_checksum_protocol() being correct.
    
    I believe that this problem has not been observed for VLANs because it
    appears that almost all drivers, the exception being xgbe, set
    vlan_features such that that the checksum offload support for VLAN packets
    is greater than or equal to that of non-VLAN packets.
    
    I wonder if the code in xgbe may be an oversight and the hardware does
    support checksumming of VLAN packets.  If so it may be worth updating the
    vlan_features of the driver as this patch will force such checksums to be
    performed in software rather than hardware.
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatarSimon Horman <horms@verge.net.au>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
    1cdbcb79