Re: [BK PATCH 2.6] fix sysctl breakage during network device renaming, for ipv4

On Tue, 26 Aug 2003 18:38:12 +0300
Dan Aloni [off-list ref] wrote:

  Sysctl assumes its ctl_table.procname field is const, but the 
  networking points ctl_table.procname to dev->name. When renaming 
  a network device using SIOCSIFNAME, dev->name is modified and 
  sysctl's assumption breaks, causing this behaviour, at least:
  
    1. sysctl wouldn't be able to remove the proc entry when the 
       device requests to be unregistered, because it would be 
       using the new name instead of the old one.
    2. proc entries for devices remain with the old name after 
       rename.
    
  This change includes allocating the current device name to a
  new copy upon registering with sysctl, plus re-registering with 
  sysctl when the device is renamed.

Conceptually this change is OK.  But please don't put generic
things like a strdup() implementation statically into
net/ipv4/devinet.c, it does not belong there.