From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman) Subject: Re: [PATCH] netns: fix net_alloc_generic() Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:54:07 -0800 Message-ID: References: <1327523631-3480-1-git-send-email-sjur.brandeland@stericsson.com> <1327574498.2500.22.camel@edumazet-HP-Compaq-6005-Pro-SFF-PC> <4F212E7E.2040801@parallels.com> <1327575108.2500.24.camel@edumazet-HP-Compaq-6005-Pro-SFF-PC> <1327644547.2919.11.camel@edumazet-laptop> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Cc: Pavel Emelyanov , Sjur =?utf-8?Q?Br=C3=A6ndeland?= , "levinsasha928\@gmail.com" , "netdev\@vger.kernel.org" , "davem\@davemloft.net" , "linux-kernel\@vger.kernel.org" , "davej\@redhat.com" , "sjurbren\@gmail.com" To: Eric Dumazet Return-path: In-Reply-To: <1327644547.2919.11.camel@edumazet-laptop> (Eric Dumazet's message of "Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:09:07 +0100") Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org Eric Dumazet writes: > Le jeudi 26 janvier 2012 =C3=A0 14:57 -0800, Eric W. Biederman a =C3=A9= crit : > >> It is not a chicken and egg problem. It is a bug in caif. >> caif is claiming to be a network device when it is acting as a subsy= tem. >> That means it is being initialized too late. >>=20 > > Ah ok ! > >> Untested but this should trivially fix the problem, and a bunch >> of others of the same ilk. >>=20 > > Hmm, please refrain from using "trivially" or "trivial", you're not > fooling anyone. All I meant is that the change was trivial. > Truth is this netns layer is horribly complex, since this CAIF bug > needed no more than four patch attempts and lastly your own work befo= re > finding the root cause. As for the complexity I don't know that it is noticeably worse than the initialization complexity of the network stack in general. I do think that it is non-obvious that serious initialization ordering problems can be caused by such a small difference. The non-locality and of cause and effect, combined with unfamiliarity of the code seems to be what hides problems like this. Once you know that initialization ordering problems tend to registering the wrong way. Aka as a device instead of a subsys the solution to problems like this tend to jump out at you. Now the common plumbing in net/core/net_namespace.c does count as complex. The fact we missed such an obvious optimization opportunity for so long seems to confirm that. I am open for ideas on how to simply things. =20 Eric