[Lxc-users] uevent when moving nic between network namespaces?

[Serge Hallyn]

Quoting Eric W. Biederman (ebiederm at xmission.com):
> Serge Hallyn <serge.hallyn at canonical.com> writes:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > Dan Kegel (cc:d) found an interesting nuisance relating to upstart
> > and network interfaces with lxc containers.  In particular, when you
> > start a container, two veths are created.  A uevent for their creation
> > is sent, and so a 'network-interface' upstart job is created for each.
> > One of the veths is passed into the container.  When the container
> > shuts down, the veth in the init-net-ns gets a net-device-removed
> > uevent, so the network-interface upstart job goes away.  But the veth
> > in the container doesn't cause a net-device-removed upstart uevent
> > to be sent.  So its network-interface upstart job sticks around.
> >
> > The details are at:
> >
> > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lxc/+bug/1065589
> >
> > I notice that when simply renaming a netdev (sudo ip link set veth1 name
> > veth2) then udevadm monitor shows:
> >
> > KERNEL[17945.234850] move     /devices/virtual/net/veth2 (net)
> > UDEV  [17945.235758] move     /devices/virtual/net/veth2 (net)
> >
> > but when I do 'sudo ip link set veth2 netns 27689' then 'udevadm
> > monitor' shows nothing.
> >
> > When I do
> >
> > 	sudo ip link set veth1 netns 32296
> > 	(in process 32296) sudo ip link set veth1 name veth2
> >
> > then, again udevadm monitor shows nothing.
> >
> > So the question is, should the kernel be sending uevents for
> > net-device-removed and then net-device-added when a nic is moved
> > between network namespaces?  Or should lxc just fake that?
> 
> To the best of my memory I wired up those events, and they should be
> delivered.  Now they uevents will only be delivered in the relevant
> network namespace.
> 
> Hmm.  But the relevant code in the kernel is device_rename, and it
> happens after we switch the network namespace on the device.
> 
> Which probably means that in practice only the new network namespace is
> seeing uevents.
> 
> Grr.

Ah, indeed.  A few more experiments show that:

1. 'sudo ip link add type veth' on the host ends up with some kernel
messages, namely

KERNEL[389.393581] add      /devices/virtual/net/veth1/queues/rx-0 (queues)
KERNEL[389.394953] add      /devices/virtual/net/veth1/queues/tx-0 (queues)

sent to all namespaces - though the 

UDEV  [389.405255] add      /devices/virtual/net/veth1 (net)

only gets sent to the initial namespace.

2. Then when I 'sudo ip link set veth1 netns <pid-in-container>', I get

KERNEL[405.041296] move     /devices/virtual/net/veth2 (net)

only in the container's namespace - exactly as you said above should
happen.

Eric, are you working on a patch for this?  Should we just explicitly
add a remove uevent before doing the transition, or is it more
complicated than that?

thanks,
-serge