Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 1/5] netlink: extended ACK reporting

From: Johannes Berg <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2017 20:38:46 +0200

On Mon, 2017-04-10 at 17:40 +0200, Johannes Berg wrote:
> 
> Another thought: if we add a new flag that indicates "message has
> been capped", which we introduce in this same patch, then we can
> disentangle this more easily, right?
> 
> Adding a new flag for "TLVs present" won't really help, but if you
> know the message was capped then you know the TLVs start after the
> inner nlmsghdr and you ignore that header's nlmsg_len.

Actually, the flag should be set if (and only if) the message was
capped *and* TLVs were requested (or present, doesn't matter.)

That way it becomes completely backward compatible and stateless:
 * on kernels that don't have extack you can ignore the setsockopt
   failure
 * checking if TLVs are present becomes
   flag set ||
   nlh->nlmsg_len > sizeof(*nlh) + sizeof(int) +
                    sizeof(*inner_nlh) + inner_nlh->nlmsg_len
 * TLV start offset is
   tlv_start_offs = sizeof(*nlh) + sizeof(int) + sizeof(inner_nlh)
   if (flag set)
       tlv_start_offs += inner_nlh->nlmsg_len

I need to resend anyway so I'll add that tomorrow.

johannes