History log of /linux-master/include/crypto/internal/cryptouser.h
Revision Date Author Comments
# 6a8dbd71 12-Mar-2024 Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>

Revert "crypto: remove CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS"

This reverts commit 2beb81fbf0c01a62515a1bcef326168494ee2bd0.

While removing CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS is a worthy goal, this also
removed unrelated infrastructure such as crypto_comp_alg_common.

Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>


# 2beb81fb 23-Feb-2024 Eric Biggers <ebiggers@google.com>

crypto: remove CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS

Remove support for the "Crypto usage statistics" feature
(CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS). This feature does not appear to have ever been
used, and it is harmful because it significantly reduces performance and
is a large maintenance burden.

Covering each of these points in detail:

1. Feature is not being used

Since these generic crypto statistics are only readable using netlink,
it's fairly straightforward to look for programs that use them. I'm
unable to find any evidence that any such programs exist. For example,
Debian Code Search returns no hits except the kernel header and kernel
code itself and translations of the kernel header:
https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=CRYPTOCFGA_STAT&literal=1&perpkg=1

The patch series that added this feature in 2018
(https://lore.kernel.org/linux-crypto/1537351855-16618-1-git-send-email-clabbe@baylibre.com/)
said "The goal is to have an ifconfig for crypto device." This doesn't
appear to have happened.

It's not clear that there is real demand for crypto statistics. Just
because the kernel provides other types of statistics such as I/O and
networking statistics and some people find those useful does not mean
that crypto statistics are useful too.

Further evidence that programs are not using CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS is that
it was able to be disabled in RHEL and Fedora as a bug fix
(https://gitlab.com/redhat/centos-stream/src/kernel/centos-stream-9/-/merge_requests/2947).

Even further evidence comes from the fact that there are and have been
bugs in how the stats work, but they were never reported. For example,
before Linux v6.7 hash stats were double-counted in most cases.

There has also never been any documentation for this feature, so it
might be hard to use even if someone wanted to.

2. CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS significantly reduces performance

Enabling CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS significantly reduces the performance of
the crypto API, even if no program ever retrieves the statistics. This
primarily affects systems with large number of CPUs. For example,
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/2039576 reported
that Lustre client encryption performance improved from 21.7GB/s to
48.2GB/s by disabling CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS.

It can be argued that this means that CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS should be
optimized with per-cpu counters similar to many of the networking
counters. But no one has done this in 5+ years. This is consistent
with the fact that the feature appears to be unused, so there seems to
be little interest in improving it as opposed to just disabling it.

It can be argued that because CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS is off by default,
performance doesn't matter. But Linux distros tend to error on the side
of enabling options. The option is enabled in Ubuntu and Arch Linux,
and until recently was enabled in RHEL and Fedora (see above). So, even
just having the option available is harmful to users.

3. CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS is a large maintenance burden

There are over 1000 lines of code associated with CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS,
spread among 32 files. It significantly complicates much of the
implementation of the crypto API. After the initial submission, many
fixes and refactorings have consumed effort of multiple people to keep
this feature "working". We should be spending this effort elsewhere.

Cc: Corentin Labbe <clabbe@baylibre.com>
Signed-off-by: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@google.com>
Acked-by: Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Corentin Labbe <clabbe@baylibre.com>
Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>


# 939f146b 23-Jul-2019 Masahiro Yamada <yamada.masahiro@socionext.com>

crypto: user - fix potential warnings in cryptouser.h

Function definitions in headers are usually marked as 'static inline'.

Since 'inline' is missing for crypto_reportstat(), if it were not
referenced from a .c file that includes this header, it would produce
a warning.

Also, 'struct crypto_user_alg' is not declared in this header.

I included <linux/crytouser.h> instead of adding the forward declaration
as suggested [1].

Detected by compile-testing this header as a standalone unit:

./include/crypto/internal/cryptouser.h:6:44: warning: ‘struct crypto_user_alg’ declared inside parameter list will not be visible outside of this definition or declaration
struct crypto_alg *crypto_alg_match(struct crypto_user_alg *p, int exact);
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
./include/crypto/internal/cryptouser.h:11:12: warning: ‘crypto_reportstat’ defined but not used [-Wunused-function]
static int crypto_reportstat(struct sk_buff *in_skb, struct nlmsghdr *in_nlh, struct nlattr **attrs)
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/6/13/1121

Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <yamada.masahiro@socionext.com>
Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>


# 91b05a7e 09-Jul-2019 Ondrej Mosnacek <omosnace@redhat.com>

crypto: user - make NETLINK_CRYPTO work inside netns

Currently, NETLINK_CRYPTO works only in the init network namespace. It
doesn't make much sense to cut it out of the other network namespaces,
so do the minor plumbing work necessary to make it work in any network
namespace. Code inspired by net/core/sock_diag.c.

Tested using kcapi-dgst from libkcapi [1]:
Before:
# unshare -n kcapi-dgst -c sha256 </dev/null | wc -c
libkcapi - Error: Netlink error: sendmsg failed
libkcapi - Error: Netlink error: sendmsg failed
libkcapi - Error: NETLINK_CRYPTO: cannot obtain cipher information for hmac(sha512) (is required crypto_user.c patch missing? see documentation)
0

After:
# unshare -n kcapi-dgst -c sha256 </dev/null | wc -c
32

[1] https://github.com/smuellerDD/libkcapi

Signed-off-by: Ondrej Mosnacek <omosnace@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>


# e17568e1 10-Jan-2019 Eric Biggers <ebiggers@google.com>

crypto: user - forward declare crypto_nlsk

Move the declaration of crypto_nlsk into internal/cryptouser.h. This
fixes the following sparse warning:

crypto/crypto_user_base.c:41:13: warning: symbol 'crypto_nlsk' was not declared. Should it be static?

Cc: Corentin Labbe <clabbe@baylibre.com>
Signed-off-by: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>


# 0c99c2a0 13-Dec-2018 Corentin Labbe <clabbe@baylibre.com>

crypto: user - remove unused dump functions

This patch removes unused dump functions for crypto_user_stats.
There are remains of the copy/paste of crypto_user_base to
crypto_user_stat and I forgot to remove them.

Signed-off-by: Corentin Labbe <clabbe@baylibre.com>
Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>


# 2ced2607 29-Nov-2018 Corentin Labbe <clabbe@baylibre.com>

crypto: user - made crypto_user_stat optional

Even if CRYPTO_STATS is set to n, some part of CRYPTO_STATS are
compiled.
This patch made all part of crypto_user_stat uncompiled in that case.

Signed-off-by: Corentin Labbe <clabbe@baylibre.com>
Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>


# cac5818c 19-Sep-2018 Corentin Labbe <clabbe@baylibre.com>

crypto: user - Implement a generic crypto statistics

This patch implement a generic way to get statistics about all crypto
usages.

Signed-off-by: Corentin Labbe <clabbe@baylibre.com>
Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>