On Thu, 2006-13-07 at 10:50 -0700, Randy.Dunlap wrote: > On Mon, 19 Jun 2006 09:41:22 -0400 jamal wrote: > > > > > Folks, > > > > Attached is a document that should help people wishing to use generic > > netlink interface. It is a WIP so a lot more to go if i see interest. > > Hi, > I have a few random questions about gen-netlink. > > 1. Provider IDs (numbers) and names must be unique. Does > this affect virtualization in any way or is it just transparent? >
You are referring to the openvz type of virtualization i suspect, no? i.e not XEN or UML etc. Good question. I think whatever those folks do for standard sockets will work in this case as well; it is related to the way they handle process management in the different virtual compartments. So if standard netlink is transparent, I believe gen-netlink will be as well. A quick test is to run "ip mon" on one VE and see if adding a route on another generates an event on the former VE. > 2. Is (generic) netlink meant (expected, OK) to be used for > non-networking ioctl/sysfs replacements? It is OK to be used but i am not sure if we are saying it is _the_ replacement for ioctls for example. It certainly has many advantages over ioctl/sysfs - eg (an incomplete list): - ability to generate asynchronous events from the kernel. - ability to do bulk transfers from/to the kernel to/from user-space (look at the way what Shailabh is working on may end up transmitting upto a few MB of data from the kernel at a time) - ability to do simple attribute set/get/event or a complex (multi-nested) vector of such attributes - ability to act as an IPC between user-user or user-kernel - ability to do one to many communication; so a single user space message could be sent to many kernel _and user_ destinations and the reverse a single kernel message could be sent to many kernel or user listeners. - the fact that it is a "a network wire" format allows for it to be used for inter-machine communication (in a distributed system type setup for example). etc Try doing the above with ioctl or sysfs ;-> cheers, jamal - 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
