From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Patrick McHardy Subject: Re: [PATCH] net: Add etun driver Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:11:29 +0200 Message-ID: <461A9DF1.8080904@trash.net> References: <1176136628.8459.34.camel@johannes.berg> <461A70A5.8060607@trash.net> <20070409.114402.45491411.davem@davemloft.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: David Miller , akpm@linux-foundation.org, dim@openvz.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org, johannes@sipsolutions.net, jgarzik@pobox.com, containers@lists.osdl.org, kuznet@ms2.inr.ac.ru, shemminger@linux-foundation.org, greearb@candelatech.com To: "Eric W. Biederman" Return-path: Received: from stinky.trash.net ([213.144.137.162]:43466 "EHLO stinky.trash.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S965513AbXDIULv (ORCPT ); Mon, 9 Apr 2007 16:11:51 -0400 In-Reply-To: Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org Eric W. Biederman wrote: > The core mechanism for network configuration does not support creating > virtual devices in a extensible reusable way. > > In particular the tunnel types supported by iproute2 are hard coded > into the user space tool and into the kernel interface. The interface > seems to be not the least bit extensible for creating new types of > non hardware backed network devices. Yes, it sucks. > So I don't see a readily usable mechanism for network configuration in > netlink. Thats why I suggested that we should create one, ideally before adding more sysfs/proc/ioctl/... based interfaces, which we'll have a hard time getting rid of again. I could take care of this if you don't mind waiting until 2.6.23. > The fact that netlink it uses unreliable packets and an > asynchronous interface just adds to the difficulty in making use of > it. Its reliable on the userspace->kernel path as long as you don't use MSG_DONTWAIT.