linux/Documentation
Jakub Kicinski 0db0c34cfb net: tighten the definition of interface statistics
This patch is born out of an investigation into which IEEE statistics
correspond to which struct rtnl_link_stats64 members. Turns out that
there seems to be reasonable consensus on the matter, among many drivers.
To save others the time (and it took more time than I'm comfortable
admitting) I'm adding comments referring to IEEE attributes to
struct rtnl_link_stats64.

Up until now we had two forms of documentation for stats - in
Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-class-net-statistics and the comments
on struct rtnl_link_stats64 itself. While the former is very cautious
in defining the expected behavior, the latter feel quite dated and
may not be easy to understand for modern day driver author
(e.g. rx_over_errors). At the same time modern systems are far more
complex and once obvious definitions lost their clarity. For example
- does rx_packet count at the MAC layer (aFramesReceivedOK)?
packets processed correctly by hardware? received by the driver?
or maybe received by the stack?

I tried to clarify the expectations, further clarifications from
others are very welcome.

The part hardest to untangle is rx_over_errors vs rx_fifo_errors
vs rx_missed_errors. After much deliberation I concluded that for
modern HW only two of the counters will make sense. The distinction
between internal FIFO overflow and packets dropped due to back-pressure
from the host is likely too implementation (driver and device) specific
to expose in the standard stats.

Now - which two of those counters we select to use is anyone's pick:

sysfs documentation suggests rx_over_errors counts packets which
did not fit into buffers due to MTU being too small, which I reused.
There don't seem to be many modern drivers using it (well, CAN drivers
seem to love this statistic).

Of the remaining two I picked rx_missed_errors to report device drops.
bnxt reports it and it's folded into "drop"s in procfs (while
rx_fifo_errors is an error, and modern devices usually receive the frame
OK, they just can't admit it into the pipeline).

Of the drivers I looked at only AMD Lance-like and NS8390-like use all
three of these counters. rx_missed_errors counts missed frames,
rx_over_errors counts overflow events, and rx_fifo_errors counts frames
which were truncated because they didn't fit into buffers. This suggests
that rx_fifo_errors may be the correct stat for truncated packets, but
I'd think a FIFO stat counting truncated packets would be very confusing
to a modern reader.

v2:
 - add driver developer notes about ethtool stat count and reset
 - replace Ethernet with IEEE 802.3 to better indicate source of attrs
 - mention byte counters don't count FCS
 - clarify RX counter is from device to host
 - drop "sightly" from sysfs paragraph
 - add examples of ethtool stats
 - s/incoming/received/ s/incoming/transmitted/

Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
2020-09-07 15:08:05 -07:00
..
ABI powerpc/perf/hv-24x7: Move cpumask file to top folder of hv-24x7 driver 2020-08-21 23:35:27 +10:00
accounting
admin-guide Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2020-09-04 21:28:59 -07:00
arm ARM development for 5.9-rc1: 2020-08-06 10:17:00 -07:00
arm64 IOMMU Updates for Linux v5.9 2020-08-11 14:13:24 -07:00
block for-5.9/drivers-20200803 2020-08-05 10:51:40 -07:00
bpf bpf: Update .BTF_ids section in btf.rst with sets info 2020-08-25 15:41:15 -07:00
cdrom A handful of obvious fixes that wandered in during the merge window. 2020-08-13 13:57:45 -07:00
core-api A handful of obvious fixes that wandered in during the merge window. 2020-08-13 13:57:45 -07:00
cpu-freq
crypto It's been a busy cycle for documentation - hopefully the busiest for a 2020-08-04 22:47:54 -07:00
dev-tools A handful of obvious fixes that wandered in during the merge window. 2020-08-13 13:57:45 -07:00
devicetree Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net 2020-09-04 21:28:59 -07:00
doc-guide
driver-api Fpga: Documentation: Replace deprecated :c:func: Usage 2020-08-24 17:19:06 -06:00
fault-injection nvme: rename and document nvme_end_request 2020-08-21 17:14:28 -06:00
fb drm next for 5.9-rc1 2020-08-05 19:50:06 -07:00
features A handful of obvious fixes that wandered in during the merge window. 2020-08-13 13:57:45 -07:00
filesystems affs: fix basic permission bits to actually work 2020-08-31 12:20:31 +02:00
firmware_class
firmware-guide ACPI: Replace HTTP links with HTTPS ones 2020-07-27 14:47:08 +02:00
fpga Char/Misc driver patches for 5.9-rc1 2020-08-05 11:43:47 -07:00
gpu - Core Frameworks 2020-08-11 13:48:02 -07:00
hid
hwmon Documentation: fix typo for abituguru documentation 2020-08-24 17:19:07 -06:00
i2c Merge branch 'i2c/for-5.9' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/wsa/linux 2020-08-13 18:41:00 -07:00
ia64 docs: ia64: correct typo 2020-07-31 11:09:09 -06:00
ide
iio
infiniband
input Input: uinput - fix typo in function name documentation 2020-07-28 18:24:11 -07:00
isdn
kbuild kbuild: Documentation: clean up makefiles.rst 2020-09-03 12:21:22 +09:00
kernel-hacking
leds LEDs changes for 5.9-rc1. 2020-08-05 19:24:27 -07:00
litmus-tests
livepatch
locking Documentation/locking/locktypes: fix local_locks documentation 2020-08-24 17:18:51 -06:00
m68k
maintainer Documentation: add riscv entry in list of existing profiles 2020-08-24 17:19:07 -06:00
mhi
mips It's been a busy cycle for documentation - hopefully the busiest for a 2020-08-04 22:47:54 -07:00
misc-devices
netlabel
networking net: tighten the definition of interface statistics 2020-09-07 15:08:05 -07:00
nios2
nvdimm
openrisc
parisc
PCI pci-v5.9-changes 2020-08-07 18:48:15 -07:00
pcmcia
power Merge branches 'pm-sleep', 'pm-domains', 'powercap' and 'pm-tools' 2020-08-03 13:12:44 +02:00
powerpc Documentation/powerpc: fix malformed table in syscall64-abi 2020-08-27 17:40:55 +10:00
process docs: Fix function name trailing double-()s 2020-08-24 17:19:07 -06:00
RCU docs: Fix function name trailing double-()s 2020-08-24 17:19:07 -06:00
riscv
s390 It's been a busy cycle for documentation - hopefully the busiest for a 2020-08-04 22:47:54 -07:00
scheduler sched/doc: Factorize bits between sched-energy.rst & sched-capacity.rst 2020-08-01 09:19:43 +02:00
scsi
security
sh
sound ALSA: hda: use consistent HDAudio spelling in comments/docs 2020-09-02 19:31:32 +02:00
sparc
sphinx
sphinx-static
spi
staging remoteproc updates for v5.9 2020-08-11 11:17:45 -07:00
target
timers docs: timers: drop documentation about LB_BIAS 2020-07-23 14:32:44 -06:00
trace A handful of obvious fixes that wandered in during the merge window. 2020-08-13 13:57:45 -07:00
translations docs: Fix function name trailing double-()s 2020-08-24 17:19:07 -06:00
usb USB: Replace HTTP links with HTTPS ones 2020-07-21 13:41:57 +02:00
userspace-api remoteproc updates for v5.9 2020-08-11 11:17:45 -07:00
virt powerpc updates for 5.9 2020-08-07 10:33:50 -07:00
vm mm/vmstat: add events for THP migration without split 2020-08-12 10:57:57 -07:00
w1
watchdog watchdog: add support for adjusting last known HW keepalive time 2020-08-05 18:43:02 +02:00
x86 It's been a busy cycle for documentation - hopefully the busiest for a 2020-08-04 22:47:54 -07:00
xtensa
.gitignore
asm-annotations.rst
atomic_bitops.txt
atomic_t.txt
Changes
CodingStyle
conf.py
COPYING-logo
docutils.conf
dontdiff Documentation: dontdiff: Add zstd compressed files 2020-07-31 11:51:10 +02:00
index.rst docs: index.rst: Add watch_queue 2020-07-23 14:13:23 -06:00
Kconfig
logo.gif
Makefile
memory-barriers.txt powerpc updates for 5.9 2020-08-07 10:33:50 -07:00
SubmittingPatches
watch_queue.rst