Re: Adding inode field to /proc/net/netlink

[Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com>]

Le dimanche 28 février 2010 à 01:00 -0800, David Miller a écrit :
> From: Masatake YAMATO <yamato@redhat.com>
> Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 14:45:37 +0900 (JST)
> 
> > The Inode field in /proc/net/{tcp,udp,packet,raw,...} is useful to know the types of 
> > file descriptors associated to a process. Actually lsof utility uses the field.
> > Unfortunately, unlike /proc/net/{tcp,udp,packet,raw,...}, /proc/net/netlink doesn't have the field.
> > This patch adds the field to /proc/net/netlink.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Masatake YAMATO <yamato@redhat.com>
> 
> Unfortunately we cannot add new fields without breaking the parsing
> done by existing applications.

Hmm we already did such expansion last year with commit 38938bfe when
Pablo Neira Ayuso added the Drops column

Extract of its Changelog :

 This patch also includes the use of sk_drop to account the number of
 netlink messages drop due to overrun. This value is shown in
 /proc/net/netlink.

So yes, some applications might break but they probably already broke
one year ago and their maintainers should know that adding new fields at
the end of lines is expected ?

Acked-by: Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com>

Thanks