This patch adds a new protocol attribute to IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. Inspiration was taken from the protocol attribute of routes. User space applications like iproute2 can set/get the protocol with the Netlink API. The attribute is stored as an 8-bit unsigned integer. The protocol attribute is set by kernel for these categories: - IPv4 and IPv6 loopback addresses - IPv6 addresses generated from router announcements - IPv6 link local addresses User space may pass custom protocols, not defined by the kernel. Grouping addresses on their origin is useful in scenarios where you want to distinguish between addresses based on who added them, e.g. kernel vs. user space. Tagging addresses with a string label is an existing feature that could be used as a solution. Unfortunately the max length of a label is 15 characters, and for compatibility reasons the label must be prefixed with the name of the device followed by a colon. Since device names also have a max length of 15 characters, only -1 characters is guaranteed to be available for any origin tag, which is not that much. A reference implementation of user space setting and getting protocols is available for iproute2: https://github.com/westermo/iproute2/commit/9a6ea18bd79f47f293e5edc7780f315ea42ff540
Showing the changes to include/uapi (1 of 6 files). Show all
Unified · Split
| @@ -33,8 +33,9 @@ enum { · 32 unmodified lines | ||
| 33 | 33 | IFA_CACHEINFO, |
| 34 | 34 | IFA_MULTICAST, |
| 35 | 35 | IFA_FLAGS, |
| 36 | − IFA_RT_PRIORITY, /* u32, priority/metric for prefix route */ | |
| 36 | + IFA_RT_PRIORITY, /* u32, priority/metric for prefix route */ | |
| 37 | 37 | IFA_TARGET_NETNSID, |
| 38 | + IFA_PROTO, /* u8, address protocol */ | |
| 38 | 39 | __IFA_MAX, |
| 39 | 40 | }; |
| 40 | 41 | |
| @@ -69,4 +70,10 @@ struct ifa_cacheinfo { · 28 unmodified lines | ||
| 69 | 70 | #define IFA_PAYLOAD(n) NLMSG_PAYLOAD(n,sizeof(struct ifaddrmsg)) |
| 70 | 71 | #endif |
| 71 | 72 | |
| 73 | +/* ifa_proto */ | |
| 74 | +#define IFAPROT_UNSPEC 0 | |
| 75 | +#define IFAPROT_KERNEL_LO 1 /* loopback */ | |
| 76 | +#define IFAPROT_KERNEL_RA 2 /* set by kernel from router announcement */ | |
| 77 | +#define IFAPROT_KERNEL_LL 3 /* link-local set by kernel */ | |
| 78 | + | |
| 72 | 79 | #endif |