Re: [RFC][PATCH] Fixing SA/SP dumps on netlink/af_key

David Miller wrote:

From: Timo_Teräs <redacted>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:11:17 +0200

quoted

I thought my patch would qualify as "life support" bug fix.
Currently racoon fails to work if there are too many SPDs or SAs
because the kernel cannot handle the dump request properly. And this
is what my patch fixes for pfkey. It adds no new features or
functionality; just makes the dumping work with large databases.

Racoon should use netlink for reasons far and beyond the
problem you are trying to address.

Yes. But this is fairly major thing to do. One needs to create
API abstraction layer (still need to use pfkey in *BSD). Test it.
A lot of work that is not going to happen very soon.

Where as the pfkey bug fix is non-intrusive and helps all
legacy applications still using af_key by _fixing a bug in
kernel_.

The dumping behavior of AF_KEY is just horrific, as one of
several examples.

If af_key is all that bad and does not qualify to get maintanace
bug fixes, why not remove it complitely?

That would make userland adapt faster.

quoted

Then there's also the xfrm dumping changes which change the
algorithm from O(n^2) to O(n) with some memory overhead, but
that is a different story. Any comments on that?

I have no general objections to those changes although I am
backlogged and thus have not studied them in detail.  Jamal
is having what appears to be a healthy dialogue with you about
the details so I'm not concerned much :)

Ok. I hope someone can also give feedback on the naming
conventions. And about the api changes to xfrm policy/state
walking.

- Timo