NAME

ovs-vlan-bug-workaround - utility for configuring Linux VLAN driver bug workaround

SYNOPSIS

ovs-vlan-bug-workaround netdev on
ovs-vlan-bug-workaround netdev off
ovs-vlan-bug-workaround --help
ovs-vlan-bug-workaround --version

DESCRIPTION

Some Linux network drivers support a feature called ``VLAN acceleration''. VLAN acceleration is associated with a data structure called a vlan_group that is, abstractly, a dictionary that maps from a VLAN ID (in the range 0 to 4095) to a VLAN device, that is, a Linux network device associated with a particular VLAN, e.g. eth0.9 for VLAN 9 on eth0.

Some drivers that support VLAN acceleration have bugs that fall roughly into the categories listed below. ovs-vlan-test(8) can test for these driver bugs.

When NICs use VLAN stripping on receive they must pass a pointer to a vlan_group when reporting the stripped tag to the networking core. If no vlan_group is in use then some drivers just drop the extracted tag. Drivers are supposed to only enable stripping if a vlan_group is registered but not all of them do that.
On receive, some drivers handle priority tagged packets specially and don't pass the tag onto the network stack at all, so Open vSwitch never has a chance to see it.
Some drivers size their receive buffers based on whether a vlan_group is enabled, meaning that a maximum size packet with a VLAN tag will not fit if no vlan_group is configured.
On transmit, some drivers expect that VLAN acceleration will be used if it is available, which can only be done if a vlan_group is configured. In these cases, the driver may fail to parse the packet and correctly setup checksum offloading or TSO.

The correct long term solution is to fix these driver bugs.

For now, ovs-vlan-bug-workaround can enable a special-purpose workaround for devices with buggy VLAN acceleration. A kernel patch must be applied for this workaround to work.

Use the command ovs-vlan-bug-workaround netdev on to enable the VLAN driver bug workaround for network device netdev. Use the command ovs-vlan-bug-workaround netdev off to disable the VLAN driver bug workaround for network device netdev.

DRIVER DETAILS

The following drivers in Linux version 2.6.32.12-0.7.1.xs1.0.0.311.170586 implement VLAN acceleration and are relevant to Open vSwitch on XenServer. We have not tested any version of most of these drivers, so we do not know whether they have a VLAN problem that needs to be fixed. The drivers are listed by the name that they report in, e.g., ethtool -i output; in a few cases this differs slightly from the name of the module's .ko file:

8139cp	acenic	amd8111e	atl1c	ATL1E	atl1
atl2	be2net	bna	bnx2	bnx2x	cnic
cxgb	cxgb3	e1000	e1000e	enic	forcedeth
igb	igbvf	ixgb	ixgbe	jme	ml4x_core
ns83820	qlge	r8169	S2IO	sky2	starfire
tehuti	tg3	typhoon	via-velocity	vxge

The following drivers use vlan_group but are irrelevant to Open vSwitch on XenServer:

bonding: Not used with Open vSwitch on XenServer.
gianfar: Not shipped with XenServer. A FreeScale CPU-integrated device.
ehea: Cannot be built on x86. IBM Power architecture only.
stmmac: Cannot be built on x86. SH4 architecture only.
vmxnet3: Not shipped with XenServer. For use inside VMware VMs only.

OPTIONS

-h
--help: Prints a brief help message to the console.
-V
--version: Prints version information to the console.

BUGS

Obviously.