Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH net-next v3 12/21] ethtool: provide permanent hardware address in GET_INFO request

From: Michal Kubecek <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2019 12:36:32 +0100

On Tue, Feb 19, 2019 at 11:24:00AM +0100, Jiri Pirko wrote:
> Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 07:22:24PM CET, [email-masked] wrote:
> >Add information about permanent hadware address of a device (as provided by
> >ETHTOOL_GPERMADDR ioctl command) in GET_INFO reply if ETH_INFO_IM_PERMADDR
> >flag is set in the request.
> >
> >There is no separate attribute for hardware address length as nla_len gives
> >this information. The reply also provides address type (net_device::type).
> >
> >Signed-off-by: Michal Kubecek <[email-masked]>
> >---
> > Documentation/networking/ethtool-netlink.txt |  9 ++++-
> > include/uapi/linux/ethtool_netlink.h         | 12 +++++-
> > net/ethtool/info.c                           | 39 ++++++++++++++++++++
> > 3 files changed, 58 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
> >
> >diff --git a/Documentation/networking/ethtool-netlink.txt b/Documentation/networking/ethtool-netlink.txt
> >index b6999a2167e8..1e615e111262 100644
> >--- a/Documentation/networking/ethtool-netlink.txt
> >+++ b/Documentation/networking/ethtool-netlink.txt
> >@@ -239,6 +239,9 @@ Kernel response contents:
> >         ETHA_DRVINFO_FWVERSION		(string)	firmware version
> >         ETHA_DRVINFO_BUSINFO		(string)	device bus address
> >         ETHA_DRVINFO_EROM_VER		(string)	expansion ROM version
> >+    ETHA_INFO_PERMADDR		(nested)
> >+        ETHA_PERMADDR_ADDRESS		(binary)	permanent HW address
> 
> I think this is a nice example of thing that should not be exposed with
> ethtool but rather via rtnetlink, alongside with the actual hw address.
> 
> [...]

I guess you are right. As we don't have to query the driver and just
read the information from struct net_device, rtnetlink does indeed seem
more appropriate.

Michal