Re: [PATCH] net: ipv6: Allow netlink to set IPv6 address scope

[Brian Haley <brian.haley@hp.com>]

On 10/05/2011 04:15 PM, Lorenzo Colitti wrote:
> net: ipv6: Allow netlink to set IPv6 address scope
> 
> Currently, userspace cannot specify the scope of IPv6
> addresses when creating or modifying them. Instead, the
> scope is automatically determined from the address itself.
> In IPv4, userspace can set whatever scope it likes.
> 
> Allow userspace to specify the scope of IPv6 addresses in
> a backwards-compatible way: if the scope passed in is zero,
> use the old behaviour of automatically determining the
> scope based on the address.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Colitti <lorenzo@google.com>

Hi Lorenzo,

I remember someone proposing a similar patch before and it was not accepted, do
you have a use case for doing this?  It just seems like it will cause problems.

Also, there are other parts of the kernel (NFS, SCTP, IPv6 multicast) that are
still calling ipv6_addr_scope() on a plain address - won't those be broken since
they'll return the correct, RFC-implied scope?

-Brian