Re: [PATCH net 1/2] netlink: add NLA_U8_BUGGY attribute type

[David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>]

From: Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>
Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2017 18:30:10 +0100

> On Tue, 2017-12-05 at 11:41 -0500, David Miller wrote:
>> 
>> There is no reasonable interpretation for what that application is
>> doing, so I think we can safely call that case as buggy.
>> 
>> We are only trying to handle the situation where a U8 attribute
>> is presented as a bonafide U32 or a correct U8.
>> 
>> Does this make sense?
> 
> Well the application is buggy, but we don't really know in what way?
> Perhaps somebody even did the equivalent of
>     nla_put_u32(ATTR, cpu_to_le32(x))
> when they noticed it was broken on BE, and end up with a similar case
> as I had above.
> 
> I don't think there's a good solution to this, applications must be
> fixed anyhow. I'm just saying that I'd save the extra code and stay
> compatible with applications as written today, even if they're now
> broken on BE - and rely on the warning to fix it. Trying to fix it up
> seems to have the potential to just break something else.

You might be right.

Ok let's just go with the warning + existing behavior for now.