net: do not create fallback tunnels for non-default namespaces

fallback tunnels (like tunl0, gre0, gretap0, erspan0, sit0,
ip6tnl0, ip6gre0) are automatically created when the corresponding
module is loaded.

These tunnels are also automatically created when a new network
namespace is created, at a great cost.

In many cases, netns are used for isolation purposes, and these
extra network devices are a waste of resources. We are using
thousands of netns per host, and hit the netns creation/delete
bottleneck a lot. (Many thanks to Kirill for recent work on this)

Add a new sysctl so that we can opt-out from this automatic creation.

Note that these tunnels are still created for the initial namespace,
to be the least intrusive for typical setups.

Tested:
lpk43:~# cat add_del_unshare.sh
for i in `seq 1 40`
do
 (for j in `seq 1 100` ; do  unshare -n /bin/true >/dev/null ; done) &
done
wait

lpk43:~# echo 0 >/proc/sys/net/core/fb_tunnels_only_for_init_net
lpk43:~# time ./add_del_unshare.sh

real	0m37.521s
user	0m0.886s
sys	7m7.084s
lpk43:~# echo 1 >/proc/sys/net/core/fb_tunnels_only_for_init_net
lpk43:~# time ./add_del_unshare.sh

real	0m4.761s
user	0m0.851s
sys	1m8.343s
lpk43:~#

Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

1 files changed, 12 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/net.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/net.txt
index 35c62f522754..5992602469d8 100644
--- a/Documentation/sysctl/net.txt
+++ b/Documentation/sysctl/net.txt
@@ -270,6 +270,18 @@ optmem_max
 Maximum ancillary buffer size allowed per socket. Ancillary data is a sequence
 of struct cmsghdr structures with appended data.
 
+fb_tunnels_only_for_init_net
+----------------------------
+
+Controls if fallback tunnels (like tunl0, gre0, gretap0, erspan0,
+sit0, ip6tnl0, ip6gre0) are automatically created when a new
+network namespace is created, if corresponding tunnel is present
+in initial network namespace.
+If set to 1, these devices are not automatically created, and
+user space is responsible for creating them if needed.
+
+Default : 0  (for compatibility reasons)
+
 2. /proc/sys/net/unix - Parameters for Unix domain sockets
 -------------------------------------------------------