Re: [PATCH] net: Shrink sock.sk_err sk_err_soft to u16 from int

[Leonard Crestez]

On 7/5/22 13:31, Paolo Abeni wrote:
> On Sun, 2022-07-03 at 23:06 +0300, Leonard Crestez wrote:
> > These fields hold positive errno values which are limited by
> > ERRNO_MAX=4095 so 16 bits is more than enough.
> >
> > They are also always positive; setting them to a negative errno value
> > can result in falsely reporting a successful read/write of incorrect
> > size.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Leonard Crestez <cdleonard@xxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> >   include/net/sock.h | 2 +-
> >   1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> >
> > I ran some relatively complex tests without noticing issues but some corner
> > case where this breaks might exist.
>
> Could you please explain in length the rationale behind this change?
>
> Note that this additionally changes the struct sock binary layout,
> which in turn in quite relevant for high speed data transfer.

The rationale is that shrinking structs is almost always better. I know 
that due to various roundings it likely won't actually impact memory 
consumption unless accumulated with other size reductions.

These sk_err fields don't seem to be in a particularly "hot" area so I 
don't think it will impact performance.

My expectation is that after a socket error is reported the socket will 
likely be closed so that there will be very few writes to this field.

--
Regards,
Leonard