Re: [PATCH] net: dev_forward_skb(): Scrub packet's per-netns info only when crossing netns

From: David Miller
Date: Tue Mar 20 2018 - 12:00:48 EST


From: Liran Alon <LIRAN.ALON@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2018 17:34:38 +0200

> I personally don't understand why we should maintain
> backwards-comparability to this behaviour.

The reason is because not breaking things is a cornerstone of Linux
kernel development.

> This feature is not documented to user-mode and I don't see why it
> is legit for the user to rely on it.

Whether it is documented or not is irrelevant. A lot of our
interfaces and behaviors are not documented or poorly documented
at best.

> In addition, even if we do want to maintain backwards-comparability to
> this behaviour, I think it is enough to have an opt-in flag in
> /proc/sys/net/core/ that when set to 1 will activate the fix in
> dev_forward_skb() provided by this patch. That would also be a very
> simple change to the patch provided here.

Making it opt-in makes it more palatable, that's for sure.