The persistent-TAP lifecycle — probe, sweep, create, register, delete —
was implemented four times, once per node type, and the copies had drifted
(probe mechanism, _tap_datapath reset, keep-vs-recreate policy). The
mechanical half moves into KernelDatapathMixin:
- _probe_persistent_taps(probe_name): the scratch-TAP probe, returning the
refusal for the caller's own warning (QEMU, Dynamips);
- _create_anchor_taps(ports, set_owner, keep_existing): sweep + create +
optional ownership handover + carrier down + registry, with the ports
enumerated by the node type and named through the new _tap_name hook;
- _delete_anchor_taps(): the suppressed tap sweep + per-link bridge
cleanup + registry clear.
Each node type keeps what its fd holder dictates: the release step before
the tap sweep (the QEMU process, the IOL bridge, the hypervisor's NIO
bindings, the container port bridges), its probe policy, and its registry
lifetime. QEMU's now-unconditional registry clear aligns it with the other
three; everything else is behavior-preserving.
Compute:
- Track the anchor that owns uBridge's single AF_PACKET capture slot: a
second kernel port's capture is refused with a clear error (its flag
rolled back), a failed start no longer wedges the port, and only the
owning port's stop issues the process-wide `capture stop_kernel`
(docker/qemu/iou/dynamips/switch, via the mixin's slot helpers).
- Unwind failed starts instead of leaking uBridge and the anchor TAPs:
QEMU's stop body runs under try/finally, QEMU and IOU start the datapath
inside the launch try, Dynamips undoes a half-attached port (the retry
used to be short-circuited into a silent black hole), and Docker deletes
the veth pair when the namespace move fails.
- Restore the relay filter guard on IOU (kernel-only filters raise
NodeError, an uncompilable BPF line degrades to a warning), validate the
eBPF/quota/window/bpf filter shapes before touching the bridge (short or
non-numeric values surfaced as 500s after partial state), and refuse a
second NIO on an occupied Docker/QEMU port (the guard IOU and Dynamips
already had).
- Probe fixes: `_probe_bridge_tap` survives a failing uBridge start, and
the probe caches key on ctime too, so a chmod/setcap remedy re-probes.
Controller:
- Parse GNS3_UNIX_SOCKET_NIO like the compute does (line-anchored, truthy
value) and mirror the compute's class selection in kernel_anchor_type.
- Read partial capability reports defensively; make BridgeNIO.bridge
required-but-nullable so an omitted key is a 422 rather than a KeyError.
- Strip the packet_loss correlation slot even when it is zero: the relay
filter takes exactly one argument and rejected `packet_loss 10 0`.
Ethernet switch: skip ports whose absorbed anchor does not exist yet (the
join is deferred by design) and roll the ports_mapping back when the VLAN
reconcile fails, so a retry still diffs against the old mapping.
Agent: reject device config entries without a device_name instead of
silently dropping them (a malformed batch used to execute partially while
reporting success).
Also split the netem builder to clear C901 and drop the two per-file ruff
ignores the PR had added, keeping the remove-only policy.
The rebase onto 65c858d45 brought upstream's UP032 enforcement; the
conflict resolution kept this branch's semantics on the overlapping
lines, so their .format() calls needed the conversion afterwards
(ruff check --fix, 41 sites) plus the formatter's rewrap (7 files).
Replicates the CI recipe locally: pip check, ruff check/format, mypy
2.3.1 (clean, 434 files), unit suite 2216 passed.
The rebase onto upstream 3.1 (mypy + ruff I001/F401 waves) left the tree
short of the newly enforced baselines in three ways:
* contextlib / UbridgeError imports dropped as false duplicates during
conflict resolution left NameErrors in iou_vm and qemu_vm (F821);
the Dynamips router grabbed the compute-level NIOTAP instead of the
hypervisor one, breaking TAP anchoring (test failure).
* unused imports (KERNEL_UNSUPPORTED_FILTERS, UbridgeError, List) and
unsorted blocks left behind where the stack's later commits moved the
last usage elsewhere — ruff I001/F401/RUF022 now enforce these.
* mypy, now baseline-free: cache dict annotations in tc_probe, the
locators candidate list, the resolved-params None branch in the MCP
runner, and validate_bpf_syntax keeps the upstream Dict[str, Any]
return (the strict Optional[str] was wrong for the "valid" bool entry).
The e2e raw-frame probe resolves its compiler via shutil.which (S607)
and zips with strict= (B905); the remaining subprocess call is S603 by
nature and gets a per-file ignore like other test files.
ruff check/format clean, mypy at upstream parity (no new errors),
full unit suite 2167 passed.
The compute-side backstop of the controller's duplicate-port guard
(keep-port-links + live-port bind made the controller guard reliable;
this is the layer under it). IOU and Dynamips bound the adapter NIO
before the uBridge/hypervisor attach: a failed attach left the port's
binding replaced — the link that still owned the port lost its handle
and its host state leaked (the IOU EBUSY incident's 8 orphan TAPs).
Dynamips was worse: its wiring idempotence check silently skipped the
attach on a second binding and rebound only the bookkeeping. A port
that already carries an NIO is now refused, and both types bind the
NIO only after the wiring succeeded.
The Ethernet switch's kernel fast path: instead of a link crossing the
switch's per-port uBridge relay, the switch absorbs the peer's anchor into
its own kernel bridge. The peer's interface (Docker veth host end, QEMU
TAP, IOU port TAP, Dynamips port TAP) becomes the switch port, and frames
cross anchor -> switch bridge -> switch ports entirely in the kernel.
Wire format: the switch end receives nio_anchor ('join this interface to
my own bridge' — the mirror of nio_bridge), the peer end nio_bridge with a
null bridge ('your anchor is bridged elsewhere': carrier, markers and
impairments only — never bridge membership, and never a bridge delete, on
an interface this node does not own). Anchor names come from the shared
naming contract (utils.kernel_anchor), a pure function of node type, id,
adapter and port — the controller computes the peer's anchor while the
node may be stopped, which is what makes links to stopped nodes wireable.
Stopped peers defer the join; after any node of a link starts
(UDPLink.node_started) the controller re-pushes the switch NIO, and the
switch completes — or repairs, when a peer restart replaced its interface
under the same name — the join against the kernel's actual membership
instead of assuming it.
VLAN changes now edit membership in place: only the ports whose mode/VLAN
actually changed are touched, each losing exactly the previous mode's
entries the new mode does not want (the dot1q admits-all entry is one
range operation in both directions), and no port ever leaves the bridge to
change its VLANs. This replaces the old 'reset by re-enslaving' shortcut
(delif+addif on every wired port, added when the ports were the switch's
own TAPs): on absorbed anchors, re-enslaving an interface owned by another
node is where live testing watched links die — anchors occasionally lost
their bridge membership right after a ports_mapping update (later updates
then failed with delif EINVAL), reproducibly with qemu, IOU and Dynamips
peers and never with Docker's veths.
Eligibility: the switch side needs no capability of its own (its bridge
exists by construction); the peer must be able to anchor. Switch-to-switch
cascades stay on the relay — a kernel interface belongs to one bridge, and
joining two bridges needs a veth pair, deferred.
Verified live on a real server: qemu peers through four VLAN cycles with
both anchors enslaved throughout; a mixed switch (2 IOU + 2 Dynamips, four
kernel ports); Docker peers with real ICMP isolating and recovering (with
both anchors still enslaved); VPCS relay ports likewise in place.
IOU's only wire is the IOL fabric (Unix datagrams, 8-byte headers,
NETMAP), so it has no host netdev to enslave — the kernel datapath gives
each Ethernet bay/unit a persistent TAP anchor the uBridge IOL bridge
binds the port to (iol_bridge add_nio_tap), which links then enslave into
their per-link kernel bridge exactly like Docker's veth and QEMU's TAP.
* IOUVM joins KernelDatapathMixin: one TAP per Ethernet bay/unit
(gi{id8}e{bay}p{unit}), created at start after a capability probe and a
stale sweep, born down and address-free; serial bays never anchor.
* _networking dispatches per NIO type: a relay link keeps iol_bridge
add_nio_udp, a kernel link binds the anchor then runs _kernel_attach.
* Stop order is QEMU's reverse, because uBridge holds the anchor fds:
iol_bridge delete (releases every port NIO) -> tap delete (a held TAP
answers EBADFD) -> brctl delete -> hypervisor stop. Removing a single
link releases its fd the same way (delete_nio_tap).
* The IOU-specific marker reconcile override is gone: marker primitives
are polymorphic on the anchor (marker *_kernel on a TAP, iol_bridge
commands on an IOL location), so the base reconcile serves both.
Capture on a kernel link anchors on the TAP (capture start_kernel);
filters are tc on the anchor, never combined with the userspace
iol_bridge filters a relay link uses.
The reconcile pass in _ubridge_apply_markers walked the node-wide
_marker_filter_bridges map but compared against `desired`, which only
carries the markers of the NIO being updated. Updating any one link
therefore deleted every other link's markers (and their pcaps) on that
node — a regression from the add-only→reconcile switch. IOU's override
had the same flaw across its ports.
Guard the delete pass with the current bridge (base_node) / IOL location
(IOU) so only markers on the NIO being reconciled can be removed. Added
a regression test that fails without the guard.
The batch marker-def fan-out (PR #2848) routed create/update/delete
marker_definition through memory_only + a batch PUT /nios/batch that
re-applies markers via _ubridge_apply_markers. But _ubridge_apply_markers
was strictly add-only: it skipped any (name, link_id) already in
_marker_filter_bridges, and reset_packet_filters preserves mark filters
(contract). So:
* delete_marker_definition left the deleted marker's filter alive in
uBridge (still matching / signalling / writing pcap) until node restart.
* update_marker_definition (bpf/tag/direction change) never reached
uBridge — the live filter kept the old expression until node restart.
Make _ubridge_apply_markers a real reconcile against the desired
nio.markers:
- installed but no longer desired → delete_packet_filter + unlink pcap
+ unregister
- desired with changed filter field → rebuild (delete + re-add)
- desired with only enabled changed → instant toggle (pcap preserved)
- desired and unchanged → skip
- desired and new → add
Track installed specs in a parallel _marker_specs dict so changes can be
detected. Both base_node and the IOU iol_bridge override are updated.
Added tests for the delete-removed and rebuild-changed-bpf paths.
The IOU override of _ubridge_apply_markers lacked the incremental guard the generic path has, so on an NIO update it re-added every marker the port already carried. uBridge's add_packet_filter rejects a duplicate filter name (packet_filter.c find_packet_filter), so adding a private marker to an IOU link that already hosted an inherited global-* copy failed with 'Failed to add filter global-...' -- the NIO update re-sends ALL markers on the port (inherited + new private), and the pre-existing one collided.
Add the same (name, link_id) in self._marker_filter_bridges skip as the generic base_node path, so an update only installs markers not already on the port. Mirrors how Dynamips/vpcs/etc. stay idempotent across add + update.
Markers now work on serial links (Cisco HDLC / PPP / Frame Relay / ATM), not just Ethernet. A marker carries a data_link_type (default DLT_EN10MB); at the uBridge boundary it becomes the 'mark ... linktype <dlt>' keyword so the BPF compiles and the pcap is written with the matching link-layer.
- MarkerCreate / MarkerDefinitionCreate gain data_link_type (default DLT_EN10MB). Per-link it is create-only; definitions are updatable (a change re-fans-out).
- base_node._marker_linktype() normalizes the GNS3 DLT name (strip DLT_, uppercase, None for EN10MB). Single source is SerialPort.data_link_types, so Cisco PPP -> PPP_SERIAL (50), matching the capture path -- no second mapping table.
- _ubridge_add_marker_filter (generic) and the IOU marker loop append 'linktype <dlt>'.
- Definition fan-out branches on link_type in inherit_marker: Ethernet is always EN10MB; a serial link uses the definition's WAN encapsulation, or is SKIPPED when none was chosen (an EN10MB pcap on serial is undecodable). One definition covers a mixed topology.
- MCP marker_definition exposes data_link_type (None = not forwarded).
- No uBridge rebuild on a data_link_type change -- only that one marker's filter is swapped (delete + re-add), mirroring a BPF change; reset_packet_filters preserves sibling mark filters.
Requires the uBridge build with 'mark ... linktype' support.
Deleting or updating a marker no longer triggers a full NIO reapply
(reset_packet_filters + re-add), which closed/reopened every sibling
marker's pcap via uBridge. Instead operate on single filters:
- stop_marker: bridge delete_packet_filter + unlink the pcap (works with
the node stopped; filter removal is skipped, the file is still deleted).
- update_marker: bpf/tag/direction → rebuild just that filter (delete + add);
enabled → instant toggle; color/highlight_duration → stored only.
- compute delete_marker_capture / rebuild_marker_filter + per-node routes
(DELETE /markers/{name}, PUT /markers/{name}/rebuild) + MarkerRebuild schema.
IOU overrides _ubridge_delete_marker_filter for iol_bridge; rebuild reuses
the already-overridden add/delete/set, so IOU needs no rebuild override.
The _marker_filter_bridges dict was keyed by marker name alone, so when one
node hosted the same filter name on several links (IUOL-BRIDGE per node with
many bays/units, or a multi-interface router), successive apply calls
overwrote earlier entries. pause_marker_definition then toggled only the last
recorded bridge/location — other copies stayed active and kept emitting.
Key by (name, link_id) so each copy is independent, and iterate all matching
entries in _ubridge_set_marker_filter_state (both generic bridge and IOU
iol_bridge override). Toggle route existence checks also iterate matching
names. Tests updated.
_ubridge_set_marker_filter_state raised "Marker X is not installed on this
node" when the capture node wasn't running — the name->bridge map is only
populated during _ubridge_apply_markers, which runs when the node is up. The
error was noise: the controller's enabled-only short-circuit catches it and
falls back, and the controller-layer enabled is authoritative (honoured when
the node starts and applies the marker). Treat a missing entry as a no-op
instead of raising.
Wire gns3-server to uBridge's real-time marker controls (contract
../ubridge/doc/gns3server-integration.md §3.2), in three layers:
A. enabled reaches uBridge — _markers_for_node no longer drops disabled
markers controller-side; it carries `enabled` in the NIO spec. apply
installs every marker then issues `enable_packet_filter … off` for the
disabled ones (base_node bridge / iou iol_bridge; old-ubridge errors
downgrade to a warning so a toggle can't break link create).
B. instant per-filter toggle — apply records name→bridge so a new
`_ubridge_set_marker_filter_state` can flip a running filter with
`enable_packet_filter on|off` (iou overrides for iol_bridge + bay/unit).
Each marker-capable node type gains PUT /markers/{name}; update_marker
short-circuits to it when only `enabled` changes (no NIO rebuild, no pcap
flush), falling back to reset+reapply if the route is unavailable.
C. global pause/resume — `_ubridge_marker_pause/resume` send `marker pause`
/ `marker resume` direct to the hypervisor (pause stops signal+pcap,
resume instant, sink retained). Six node-type routes add POST
/markers/pause|resume; project.pause_all/resume_all_markers fan out to
each capture node (deduped, best-effort); REST exposes
POST /projects/{id}/markers/pause|resume.
Toggling enabled and pause/resume are now both instant — only marker create
or a bpf change still go through reset+reapply.
Direction field in marker.match events
=======================================
Read ubridge dir=<tx|rx> from MARK signal datagrams and forward it
as a "dir" key in the marker.match notification event. The field is
additive -- older ubridge builds omit it and the parser leaves it null,
so consumers fall back to undirected rendering with no version coupling.
Semantics are relative to the capture node (the signal's node=<id>):
tx = capture node is sending (ingressed device-side NIO), rx = it is
receiving (ingressed link-side NIO).
Per-marker direction filter (opt-in, server-side pipeline)
==========================================================
Add a direction field to MarkerCreate and MarkerDefinitionCreate
schemas ("tx" | "rx" | null). Plumb it through the full pipeline:
Schema -> controller (start_marker/update_marker, marker_entry,
_markers_for_node, update_marker_definition sync)
-> REST/MCP handlers -> compute _ubridge_add_marker_filter +
IOU _ubridge_apply_markers -> bridge add_packet_filter dir <tx|rx>
When set, ubridge only fires the mark handler (signal + pcap) for
packets matching the chosen direction. null (default/legacy) = both
directions -- zero behavioural change for existing markers.
Docs and tests
==============
- docs/features/marker-traffic-insight.md: signal format updated,
new Direction section with NIO mapping, arrow mapping, and additive
compatibility note.
- tests/compute/marker/test_marker_manager.py: 3 new parser tests
(dir tx/rx/absent) plus existing test extended to assert dir=None.
13 files, +123/-22, 72 tests pass (zero breakage)
A uBridge MARK signal carries only node= and filter= (no bridge/link field), so when one node is the capture side for several links that share a marker name (always the case for global-{name} definitions on a multi-interface node) the signals were indistinguishable and the (node, filter) registry collapsed them to a single link.
The mark filter is now stamped with its link id (mark <bpf> ... link <link_id>); uBridge echoes it verbatim (link=<link_id>) and the listener uses the signal's link= as the authoritative link_id of the marker.match event, falling back to the registry only for legacy signals without it. base_node and iou apply paths pass link_id; covered by two new listener tests.
IOU uses iol_bridge (not bridge) with extra bay/unit positional
arguments in add_packet_filter. Add _ubridge_apply_markers override
that mirrors the existing _ubridge_apply_filters pattern, called at
the same three sites: _networking, adapter_add_nio_binding, and
adapter_update_nio_binding.
- Add class-level caches for loader and default RAM/NVRAM values
- When multiple IOU nodes use the same image, only the first one runs
the ld-linux --verify and iou-image -h subprocesses
- Subsequent nodes reuse cached results, saving ~2 subprocess calls per node
- Cache is populated only on successful subprocess execution to avoid
overwriting explicitly set ram/nvram values with stale cached defaults
When a hostname validation fails, the error message now includes
the allowed character set to help users provide valid names.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
