Hi Jiri,
>> The name value from SET_NETDEV_DEVTYPE only ended up in the uevent sysfs
>> file as DEVTYPE= information. To avoid any kind of race conditions
>> between netlink messages and reading from sysfs, it is useful to add the
>> same string as new IFLA_DEVTYPE attribute included in the RTM_NEWLINK
>> messages.
>>
>> For network managing daemons that have to classify ARPHRD_ETHER network
>> devices into different types (like Wireless LAN, Bluetooth etc.), this
>> avoids the extra round trip to sysfs and parsing of the uevent file.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Marcel Holtmann <mar...@holtmann.org>
>> ---
>> include/uapi/linux/if_link.h | 2 ++
>> net/core/rtnetlink.c | 12 ++++++++++++
>> 2 files changed, 14 insertions(+)
>>
>> diff --git a/include/uapi/linux/if_link.h b/include/uapi/linux/if_link.h
>> index 43391e2d1153..781294972bb4 100644
>> --- a/include/uapi/linux/if_link.h
>> +++ b/include/uapi/linux/if_link.h
>> @@ -166,6 +166,8 @@ enum {
>> IFLA_NEW_IFINDEX,
>> IFLA_MIN_MTU,
>> IFLA_MAX_MTU,
>> + IFLA_DEVTYPE, /* Name value from SET_NETDEV_DEVTYPE */
>
> This is not something netdev-related. dev->dev.type is struct device_type.
> This is a generic "device" thing. Incorrect to expose over
> netdev-specific API. Please use "device" API for this.
it is not just "device" related since this is a sub-classification of
ARPHRD_ETHER type as a wrote above. Don't get hang up that this information is
part of struct device. The dev->dev.type contains strings like "wlan",
"bluetooth", "wimax", "gadget" etc. so that you can tell what kind of Ethernet
card you have.
We can revive the patches for adding this information as IFLA_INFO_KIND, but
last time they where reverted since NetworkManager did all the wrong decisions
based on that. That part is fixed now and we can put that back and declare the
sub-type classification of Ethernet device in two places. Or we just take the
information that we added a long time ago for exactly this sub-classification
and provide them to userspace via RTNL.
Regards
Marcel
