rtnetlink: Link address family API

Each net_device contains address family specific data such as
per device settings and statistics. We already expose this data
via procfs/sysfs and partially netlink.

The netlink method requires the requester to send one RTM_GETLINK
request for each address family it wishes to receive data of
and then merge this data itself.

This patch implements a new API which combines all address family
specific link data in a new netlink attribute IFLA_AF_SPEC.
IFLA_AF_SPEC contains a sequence of nested attributes, one for each
address family which in turn defines the structure of its own
attribute. Example:

   [IFLA_AF_SPEC] = {
       [AF_INET] = {
           [IFLA_INET_CONF] = ...,
       },
       [AF_INET6] = {
           [IFLA_INET6_FLAGS] = ...,
           [IFLA_INET6_CONF] = ...,
       }
   }

The API also allows for address families to implement a function
which parses the IFLA_AF_SPEC attribute sent by userspace to
implement address family specific link options.

Signed-off-by: Thomas Graf <tgraf@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

1 files changed, 19 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/if_link.h b/include/linux/if_link.h
index 2fc66dd783ee..443d04a66a79 100644
--- a/include/linux/if_link.h
+++ b/include/linux/if_link.h
@@ -80,6 +80,24 @@ struct rtnl_link_ifmap {
 	__u8	port;
 };
 
+/*
+ * IFLA_AF_SPEC
+ *   Contains nested attributes for address family specific attributes.
+ *   Each address family may create a attribute with the address family
+ *   number as type and create its own attribute structure in it.
+ *
+ *   Example:
+ *   [IFLA_AF_SPEC] = {
+ *       [AF_INET] = {
+ *           [IFLA_INET_CONF] = ...,
+ *       },
+ *       [AF_INET6] = {
+ *           [IFLA_INET6_FLAGS] = ...,
+ *           [IFLA_INET6_CONF] = ...,
+ *       }
+ *   }
+ */
+
 enum {
 	IFLA_UNSPEC,
 	IFLA_ADDRESS,
@@ -116,6 +134,7 @@ enum {
 	IFLA_STATS64,
 	IFLA_VF_PORTS,
 	IFLA_PORT_SELF,
+	IFLA_AF_SPEC,
 	__IFLA_MAX
 };