Re: [PATCH] vsprintf: do not append unset Scope ID to IPv6

From: Daniel Borkmann
Date: Wed Feb 03 2016 - 16:07:14 EST


On 02/03/2016 11:41 AM, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
The sockaddr_in6 has the sin6_scope_id parameter. This contains the
netdev index of the output device. When set to 0, sin6_scope_id is
considered to be "unset" -- it has no Scope ID (see RFC4007). When it is
set to >0, it has a Scope ID.
[...]
So, here, either it has Scope ID, in which case it's returned, or it
doesn't need a Scope ID, in which case 0 - "no scope id" - is returned.

Therefore, vsprintf should treat the 0 Scope ID the same way the rest of
the v6 stack and the RFC treats it: 0 Scope ID means no Scope ID. And if
there is no Scope ID, there is nothing to be printed.

I don't see an "issue" here. I.e. if the developer requested to append 's'
to the specifier, then it's expected to dump what is in the scope id, even
if that is 0 meaning "unset" scope.

It would be principle of least surprise -- I could imagine if not dumped,
then a developer would check the source code to find out whether he did a
mistake or it's expected behavior, just to make sure. That's what I would
do probably.

Is this causing a _real_ issue somewhere (I couldn't parse one out of your
commit message other than 'it would be nice to have')?

So, this patch only prints the Scope ID when one exists, and does not
print a Scope ID when one does not exist.

It turns out, too, that this is what developers want. The most common
purpose of %pISpfsc is to show "what is in that sockaddr so that I can
have some idea of how to connect to it?"

Signed-off-by: Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@xxxxxxxxx>
---
lib/vsprintf.c | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/lib/vsprintf.c b/lib/vsprintf.c
index 48ff9c3..1b1b1c8 100644
--- a/lib/vsprintf.c
+++ b/lib/vsprintf.c
@@ -1194,7 +1194,7 @@ char *ip6_addr_string_sa(char *buf, char *end, const struct sockaddr_in6 *sa,
p = number(p, pend, ntohl(sa->sin6_flowinfo &
IPV6_FLOWINFO_MASK), spec);
}
- if (have_s) {
+ if (have_s && sa->sin6_scope_id) {
*p++ = '%';
p = number(p, pend, sa->sin6_scope_id, spec);
}