Re: [PATCH] macvlan: Don't propagate IFF_ALLMULTI changes on down interfaces.

[David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>]

From: Peter Christensen <pch@ordbogen.com>
Date: Mon, 12 May 2014 09:59:53 +0200

> On Fri, 09 May 2014 16:02:25 -0400 (EDT)
> David Miller <davem@davemloft.net> wrote:
> 
>> From: Peter Christensen <pch@ordbogen.com>
>> Date: Thu,  8 May 2014 11:15:37 +0200
>> 
>> > Clearing the IFF_ALLMULTI flag on a down interface could cause an
>> > allmulti overflow on the underlying interface.
>> > 
>> > Attempting the set IFF_ALLMULTI on the underlying interface would
>> > cause an error and the log message:
>> > 
>> > "allmulti touches root, set allmulti failed."
>> > 
>> > Signed-off-by: Peter Christensen <pch@ordbogen.com>
>> 
>> Hmmm, but won't we lose this event once the interface is brought
>> back up?
> 
> No, macvlan_open and macvlan_stop already takes care of that (which is
> part of the reason the allmulti counter overflowed). Either
> macvlan_open and macvlan_close shouldn't touch the flag on the
> underlying interface, or
> macvlan_change_rx_flags shouldn't touch the underlying interface if the
> MACVLAN interface is down.
> 
> I though that it was probably better to make MACVLAN as non-intrusive
> to the underlying interface when the MACVLAN interface is down, so I
> opted for this solution.
> 
> Apparently the 802.1Q VLAN driver behaves
> exactly like that, and back in 2011 it got a patch similar to this one
> (commit deede2fabe24e00bd7e246eb81cd5767dc6fcfc7).

Thanks for the detailed explanation, applied and queued up for -stable, thanks!