Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of linux-kernel+bounces-9687-linux.lists.archive=gmail.com@vger.kernel.org designates 2604:1380:4601:e00::3 as permitted sender) client-ip=2604:1380:4601:e00::3;
Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2023 13:01:10 +0100
From: Pablo Neira Ayuso <pablo@netfilter.org>
To: Felix Huettner <felix.huettner@mail.schwarz>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, netfilter-devel@vger.kernel.org,
	coreteam@netfilter.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-kselftest@vger.kernel.org, kadlec@netfilter.org, fw@strlen.de,
	davem@davemloft.net, edumazet@google.com, pabeni@redhat.com,
	shuah@kernel.org, luca.czesla@mail.schwarz,
	max.lamprecht@mail.schwarz
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next v2] net: ctnetlink: support filtering by zone
Message-ID: <ZYV6hgP35k6Bwk+H@calendula>
References: <ZWSCPKtDuYRG1XWt@kernel-bug-kernel-bug>
Precedence: bulk
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <ZWSCPKtDuYRG1XWt@kernel-bug-kernel-bug>

On Mon, Nov 27, 2023 at 11:49:16AM +0000, Felix Huettner wrote:
> conntrack zones are heavily used by tools like openvswitch to run
> multiple virtual "routers" on a single machine. In this context each
> conntrack zone matches to a single router, thereby preventing
> overlapping IPs from becoming issues.
> In these systems it is common to operate on all conntrack entries of a
> given zone, e.g. to delete them when a router is deleted. Previously this
> required these tools to dump the full conntrack table and filter out the
> relevant entries in userspace potentially causing performance issues.
> 
> To do this we reuse the existing CTA_ZONE attribute. This was previous
> parsed but not used during dump and flush requests. Now if CTA_ZONE is
> set we filter these operations based on the provided zone.
> However this means that users that previously passed CTA_ZONE will
> experience a difference in functionality.
> 
> Alternatively CTA_FILTER could have been used for the same
> functionality. However it is not yet supported during flush requests and
> is only available when using AF_INET or AF_INET6.

For the record, this is applied to nf-next.