net/packet: Fix a comment about hard_header_len and headroom allocation
authorXie He <xie.he.0141@gmail.com>
Mon, 14 Sep 2020 07:41:54 +0000 (00:41 -0700)
committerDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Mon, 14 Sep 2020 20:34:39 +0000 (13:34 -0700)
commitb4c5881446b3a5888b6815eaf9cbb5eda0f68363
tree029ec3783d5c5a453b4e91ed4fbb06e8f4950d44
parentb91c06c5df511dfed3995c4e1a44729756ef0025
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This comment is outdated and no longer reflects the actual implementation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 9454f7a895b8 ("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: Xie He <xie.he.0141@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Willem de Bruijn <willemb@google.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
net/packet/af_packet.c