Commit b4c58814 authored by Xie He's avatar Xie He Committed by David S. Miller

net/packet: Fix a comment about hard_header_len and headroom allocation

This comment is outdated and no longer reflects the actual implementation
of af_packet.c.

Reasons for the new comment:

1.

In af_packet.c, the function packet_snd first reserves a headroom of
length (dev->hard_header_len + dev->needed_headroom).
Then if the socket is a SOCK_DGRAM socket, it calls dev_hard_header,
which calls dev->header_ops->create, to create the link layer header.
If the socket is a SOCK_RAW socket, it "un-reserves" a headroom of
length (dev->hard_header_len), and checks if the user has provided a
header sized between (dev->min_header_len) and (dev->hard_header_len)
(in dev_validate_header).
This shows the developers of af_packet.c expect hard_header_len to
be consistent with header_ops.

2.

In af_packet.c, the function packet_sendmsg_spkt has a FIXME comment.
That comment states that prepending an LL header internally in a driver
is considered a bug. I believe this bug can be fixed by setting
hard_header_len to 0, making the internal header completely invisible
to af_packet.c (and requesting the headroom in needed_headroom instead).

3.

There is a commit for a WiFi driver:
commit 9454f7a8 ("mwifiex: set needed_headroom, not hard_header_len")
According to the discussion about it at:
  https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/11407493/
The author tried to set the WiFi driver's hard_header_len to the Ethernet
header length, and request additional header space internally needed by
setting needed_headroom.
This means this usage is already adopted by driver developers.

Cc: Willem de Bruijn <willemdebruijn.kernel@gmail.com>
Cc: Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com>
Cc: Brian Norris <briannorris@chromium.org>
Cc: Cong Wang <xiyou.wangcong@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: default avatarXie He <xie.he.0141@gmail.com>
Acked-by: default avatarWillem de Bruijn <willemb@google.com>
Signed-off-by: default avatarDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
parent b91c06c5
......@@ -93,12 +93,15 @@
/*
Assumptions:
- if device has no dev->hard_header routine, it adds and removes ll header
inside itself. In this case ll header is invisible outside of device,
but higher levels still should reserve dev->hard_header_len.
Some devices are enough clever to reallocate skb, when header
will not fit to reserved space (tunnel), another ones are silly
(PPP).
- If the device has no dev->header_ops, there is no LL header visible
above the device. In this case, its hard_header_len should be 0.
The device may prepend its own header internally. In this case, its
needed_headroom should be set to the space needed for it to add its
internal header.
For example, a WiFi driver pretending to be an Ethernet driver should
set its hard_header_len to be the Ethernet header length, and set its
needed_headroom to be (the real WiFi header length - the fake Ethernet
header length).
- packet socket receives packets with pulled ll header,
so that SOCK_RAW should push it back.
......
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