On Tue, 2016-02-09 at 17:41 -0800, Stephen Hemminger wrote: > On Tue, 9 Feb 2016 18:51:35 -0500 > Jarod Wilson <ja...@redhat.com> wrote: > > > On Tue, Feb 09, 2016 at 11:17:57AM -0800, Stephen Hemminger wrote: > > > Support for the new rx_nohandler statistic. > > > This code is designed to handle the case where the kernel reported > > > statistic > > > structure is smaller than the larger structure in later releases (and > > > vice versa). > > > > This seems to work here, for the most part. However, if you are running a > > kernel with the new counter, and the counter happens to contain 0, aren't > > we going to not print anything? > > That is the desirable outcome, since if run on older system the > output format will not change from current format.
The problem here is that a change in output might break some user scripts using sed/whatever games. So it might be better to output a zero field, so that such breakages are detected early, even if no packet was dropped at the time the new kernel was tested. Having a binary that adds the new field only in some cases hides the change. It looks fine for us humans, but not for programs processing the output.
