Re: [PATCH] netns: Coexist with the sysfs limitations

Benjamin Thery [off-list ref] writes:

Serge E. Hallyn wrote:

quoted

Quoting Eric W. Biederman (ebiederm@xmission.com):

quoted

To make testing of the network namespace simpler allow
the network namespace code and the sysfs code to be
compiled and run at the same time.  To do this only
virtual devices are allowed in the additional network
namespaces and those virtual devices are not placed
in the kobject tree.

Since virtual devices don't actually do anything interesting
hardware wise that needs device management there should
be no loss in keeping them out of the kobject tree and
by implication sysfs.  The gain in ease of testing
and code coverage should be significant.

I.e. people running distributions that make it next to
impossible to boot without sysfs should at be able to
boot a test kernel now.

Plus no ABIs are harmed with this patch.

quoted

quoted

Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman <redacted>

Duh.

Tested-by: Serge Hallyn <redacted>
Acked-by: Serge Hallyn <redacted>

Oh, this patch is short, clean, and the limitation introduced isn't too
annoying for testing netns right now.

At least, my proposal provoked some reactions :)

Yes.

BTW, there's a second limitation with your patch:
we can't rename the net devices in the additional network namespaces.

In net/core/dev.c, dev_change_name() fails: call to device_rename() return an
(expected) -EINVAL error.
Maybe we should add a test on the net to only call it in init_net?

Yes.  Good catch.

Eric