Subject: Re: [net-next-2.6 V7 PATCH 1/2] Add netlink support for virtual port management (was iovnl)

From: Patrick McHardy <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 20:09:20 +0200

Scott Feldman wrote:
> On 5/14/10 10:29 AM, "Arnd Bergmann" <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
>> I was thinking that a device could have both IFLA_VF_PORTS and IFLA_PORT_SELF,
>> but you know more about the IOV specifics. If an adapter having multiple
>> VFs always gets configured as VF 0 itself, that would be fine as well,
>> otherwise
>> we could have an extra argument to the two device driver callbacks to
>> differentiate VF/SELF. As long as this does not impact the user ABI, we
>> could do either.
> 
> I think you're right.  I should have said AND/OR.  I would rather not have
> an extra argument to the driver callbacks.
>   
>>> I think we should redo the other IFLA_VF_xxx msgs in the same style.  I'm
>>> not going to tackle that for IFLA_VF_PORTS patch, but it would be a good
>>> followup patch.
>> I fear it's too late for that now. While we have not yet released 2.6.34
>> and 2.6.33 does not contain the broken message, it's extremely late in the
>> stabilization phase of v2.6.34, so I doubt that there is still a chance for
>> that at this point.
> 
> That's too bad.  I wish Patrick's objections were honored and then we
> wouldn't have followed that broken model!  Can the broken msgs be disabled
> somehow for 2.6.34?  Keep the definitions in if_link.h but fail the SET/GET
> actions in rtnetlink.c?

That would be a possibility. Unfortunately I don't think we can fix
this in a backwards compatible way.