Documentation/infiniband/ucaps.rst

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Infiniband Userspace Capabilities
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   User CAPabilities (UCAPs) provide fine-grained control over specific
   firmware features in Infiniband (IB) devices. This approach offers
   more granular capabilities than the existing Linux capabilities,
   which may be too generic for certain FW features.

   Each user capability is represented as a character device with root
   read-write access. Root processes can grant users special privileges
   by allowing access to these character devices (e.g., using chown).

Usage
=====

   UCAPs allow control over specific features of an IB device using file
   descriptors of UCAP character devices. Here is how a user enables
   specific features of an IB device:

      * A root process grants the user access to the UCAP files that
        represents the capabilities (e.g., using chown).
      * The user opens the UCAP files, obtaining file descriptors.
      * When opening an IB device, include an array of the UCAP file
        descriptors as an attribute.
      * The ib_uverbs driver recognizes the UCAP file descriptors and enables
        the corresponding capabilities for the IB device.

Creating UCAPs
==============

   To create a new UCAP, drivers must first define a type in the
   rdma_user_cap enum in rdma/ib_ucaps.h. The name of the UCAP character
   device should be added to the ucap_names array in
   drivers/infiniband/core/ucaps.c. Then, the driver can create the UCAP
   character device by calling the ib_create_ucap API with the UCAP
   type.

   A reference count is stored for each UCAP to track creations and
   removals of the UCAP device. If multiple creation calls are made with
   the same type (e.g., for two IB devices), the UCAP character device
   is created during the first call and subsequent calls increment the
   reference count.

   The UCAP character device is created under /dev/infiniband, and its
   permissions are set to allow root read and write access only.

Removing UCAPs
==============

   Each removal decrements the reference count of the UCAP. The UCAP
   character device is removed from the filesystem only when the
   reference count is decreased to 0.

/dev and /sys/class files
=========================

   The class::

      /sys/class/infiniband_ucaps

   is created when the first UCAP character device is created.

   The UCAP character device is created under /dev/infiniband.

   For example, if mlx5_ib adds the rdma_user_cap
   RDMA_UCAP_MLX5_CTRL_LOCAL with name "mlx5_perm_ctrl_local", this will
   create the device node::

      /dev/infiniband/mlx5_perm_ctrl_local