Hi Eric, On Mon, Jun 26, 2006 at 09:13:52AM -0600, Eric W. Biederman wrote: > Andrey Savochkin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Cleanup of dev_base list use, with the aim to make device list > > per-namespace. > > In almost every occasion, use of dev_base variable and dev->next pointer > > could be easily replaced by for_each_netdev loop. > > A few most complicated places were converted to using > > first_netdev()/next_netdev(). > > As a proof of concept patch this is ok. > > As a real world patch this is much too big, which prevents review. > Plus it takes a few actions that are more than replace just > iterators through the device list.
dev_base list is historically not the cleanest part of Linux networking. I've still spotted a place where the first device in dev_base list is assumed to be loopback. In early days we had more, now only one place or two... > > In addition I suspect several if not all of these iterators > can be replaced with the an appropriate helper function. > > The normal structure for a patch like this would be to > introduce the new helper function. for_each_netdev. > And then to replace all of the users while cc'ing the > maintainers of those drivers. With each different > driver being a different patch. > > There is another topic for discussion in this patch as well. > How much of the context should be implicit and how much > should be explicit. > > If the changes from netchannels had already been implemented, and all of > the network processing was happening in a process context then I would > trivially agree that implicit would be the way to go. Why would we want all network processing happen in a process context? > > However short of always having code always execute in the proper > context I'm not comfortable with implicit parameters to functions. > Not that this the contents of this patch should address this but the > later patches should. We just have too many layers in networking code, and FIB/routing illustrates it well. > > When I went through this, my patchset just added an explicit > continue if the devices was not in the appropriate namespace. > I actually prefer the multiple list implementation but at > the same time I think it is harder to get a clean implementation > out of it. Certainly, dev_base list reorganization is not the crucial point in network namespaces. But it has to be done some way or other. If people vote for a single list with skipping devices from a wrong namespace, it's fine with me, I can re-make this patch. I personally prefer per-namespace device list since we have too many places in the kernel where this list is walked in a linear fashion, and with many namespaces this list may become quite long. Regards Andrey - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netdev" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
