Subject: Re: [PATCH] Virtual ethernet device (v2.1)

From: Patrick McHardy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:53:32 +0200

Pavel Emelianov wrote:
> Patrick McHardy wrote:
> 
>>Pavel Emelianov wrote:
>>
>>>+static const struct nla_policy veth_policy[VETH_INFO_MAX + 1] = {
>>>+	[VETH_INFO_MAC]		= { .type = NLA_BINARY, .len = ETH_ALEN },
>>>+	[VETH_INFO_PEER]	= { .type = NLA_STRING },
>>>+	[VETH_INFO_PEER_MAC]	= { .type = NLA_BINARY, .len = ETH_ALEN },
>>>+};
>>
>>
>>Looks good, just one question. What happended to the IFLA_PARTNER
>>attribute idea? I have a patch to allow specifying the initial
>>MAC address for a device, IFLA_PARTNER would make the whole thing
>>symetrical.
> 
> 
> Well, the notion of a partner is not applicable to any generic link
> unlike the device name, physical (MAC) address or MTU value. So i 
> think that it's better to keep this as a specific driver information 
> not to confuse the generic code. I think it's worth making this as 
> some more generic code than it is now, but since this driver is the 
> only user of "partner" maybe it's better not to make it right now. 
> Later, when we do know what do we want "partner" to be.

Mhh doing it later means dealing with compatibility issues, which
is why I'm asking now. We currently support IFLA_NAME, IFLA_MTU,
IFLA_TXQLEN, IFLA_WEIGTH, IFLA_OPERSTATE and IFLA_LINKMODE, and
with my patch additionally IFLA_ADDRESS and IFLA_BROADCAST.
AFAICT they are all applicable for the partner link as well.