Linux

Achieving high-performance, low-latency networking with XDP: Part I

Achieving high-performance, low-latency networking with XDP: Part I

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By Paolo Abeni

XDP: From zero to 14 Mpps

In past years, the kernel community has been using different approaches in the quest for ever-increasing networking performance. While improvements have been measurable in several areas, a new wave of architecture-related security issues and related counter-measures has undone most of the gains, and purely in-kernel solutions for some packet-processing intensive workloads still lag behind the bypass solution, namely Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK), by almost an order of magnitude.

But the kernel community never sleeps (almost literally) and the holy grail of kernel-based networking performance has been found under the name of XDP: the eXpress Data Path. XDP is available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Beta, which you can download and run now.

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The Non-complexity of /etc/nsswitch.conf

The Non-complexity of /etc/nsswitch.conf

djdelorie
By DJ Delorie

In most glibc-based operating systems, there’s a file /etc/nsswitch.conf that most people ignore, few people understand, but all people generally rely on. This file determines where the system finds things like host names, passwords, and protocol numbers. Does your company use LDAP? NIS? Plain files? The nsswitch file (it stands for “name services switch”) tells the system what service to use for each type of name lookup.

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How to manually copy SSH public keys to servers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

How to manually copy SSH public keys to servers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

lufimtse
By Leo Ufimtsev

We often use ssh-copy-id to copy ssh keys from our local Linux computers to RHEL servers in order to connect without typing in a password. This is not only for convenience; it enables you to script and automate tasks that involve remote machines.  Also, using ssh keys correctly is considered a best practice.  If you are conditioned to respond with your password every time you are prompted, you might not notice a prompt that isn’t legitimate (for example, spoofed).

What about when you can’t use ssh-copy-id or the target user ID doesn’t have a password (for example, an Ansible service user)? This article explains how to do it manually and avoid the common pitfall of forgetting to set the proper permissions.

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Introduction to Linux interfaces for virtual networking

Introduction to Linux interfaces for virtual networking

haliu
By Hangbin Liu

Linux has rich virtual networking capabilities that are used as basis for hosting VMs and containers, as well as cloud environments. In this post, I will give a brief introduction to all commonly used virtual network interface types. There is no code analysis, only a brief introduction to the interfaces and their usage on Linux. Anyone with a network background might be interested in this blog post. A list of interfaces can be obtained using the command ip link help.

This post covers the following frequently used interfaces and some interfaces that can be easily confused with one another:

After reading this article, you will know what these interfaces are, what’s the difference between them, when to use them, and how to create them.

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Intro to Podman (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 Beta)

Intro to Podman (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 Beta)

aarrichi
By Alessandro Arrichiello

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.6 Beta was released a few days ago and one of the first new features I noticed is Podman. Podman complements Buildah and Skopeo by offering an experience similar to the Docker command line: allowing users to run standalone (non-orchestrated) containers. And Podman doesn’t require a daemon to run containers and pods, so we can easily say goodbye to big fat daemons.

Podman implements almost all the Docker CLI commands (apart from the ones related to Docker Swarm, of course). For container orchestration, I suggest you take a look at Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift.

Podman consists of just a single command to run on the command line. There are no daemons in the background doing stuff, and this means that Podman can be integrated into system services through systemd.

We’ll cover some real examples that show how easy it can be to transition from the Docker CLI to Podman.

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Analyzing Changes to the Binary Interface Between the Linux Kernel and its Modules

Analyzing Changes to the Binary Interface Between the Linux Kernel and its Modules

dseketeli
By Dodji Seketeli

This article is for people interested in long-term Linux kernel maintenance. It introduces you to tools that can help keep the binary interfaces between the kernel and its loadable modules stable during the entire lifetime of a supposedly stable kernel, while the code is modified. As these tools are essentially analysis tools, they can be used not only by kernel developers, but also by quality assurance engineers and advanced kernel users (system programmers).

Upstream in-tree kernel modules: the ideal situation

In the canonical development model of the Linux kernel, the source code of all dynamically loaded modules is hosted alongside the source code of the core kernel. In this model, whenever the core kernel changes the interface it exposes to its modules, the compilers detects that the interface changed, making it easy to adjust the code of the modules accordingly.

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Open vSwitch-DPDK: How Much Hugepage Memory?

Open vSwitch-DPDK: How Much Hugepage Memory?

ktraynorredhat-com
By Kevin Traynor

Introduction

In order to maximize performance of the Open vSwitch DPDK datapath, it pre-allocates hugepage memory. As a user you are responsible for telling Open vSwitch how much hugepage memory to pre-allocate. The question of exactly what value to use often arises. The answer is, it depends.

There is no simple answer as it depends on things like the MTU size of the ports, the MTU differences between ports, and whether those ports are on the same NUMA node. Just to complicate things a bit more, there are multiple overheads, and alignment and rounding need to be accounted for at various places in OVS-DPDK. Everything clear? OK, you can stop reading then!
However, if not, read on.

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Using Camel-Undertow component supporting http2 connection

Using Camel-Undertow component supporting http2 connection

cpandeyredhat-com
By Chandra Shekhar Pandey

This article would help to configure http2 protocol support for the camel-undertow component.

  • Camel’s undertow component use embedded undertow web-container of version undertow-core:jar:1.4.21. This version also supports the http2 connection.
  • I have used camel version 2.21.0-SNAPSHOT from upstream https://github.com/apache/camel.
  • Also, the curl version to test application using camel-undertow component is 7.53.1. This curl version supports –http2 flag for sending an http2 request.
  • I have also used nghttp to test application from linux terminal. However, this article is not about http2 insights.
  • For http2 details, I found articles [1] and [2] helpful.

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How to enable/disable repository using Subscription Manager or Yum-Utils

tgoud
By Roshan V Sharma

This blog is to resolve the following issues/answering the following questions.

  1. How to enable a repository using the Red Hat Subscription Manager/yum?
  2. Need to access a repository using the Red Hat Subscription Manager/yum?
  3. How to disable a repository using the Red Hat Subscription Manager/yum?
  4. How to subscribe a child channel using the Red Hat Subscription Manager/yum?

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