Re: [PATCH] net: ipv6: Allow netlink to set IPv6 address scope

On 10/05/2011 04:15 PM, Lorenzo Colitti wrote:

net: ipv6: Allow netlink to set IPv6 address scope

Currently, userspace cannot specify the scope of IPv6
addresses when creating or modifying them. Instead, the
scope is automatically determined from the address itself.
In IPv4, userspace can set whatever scope it likes.

Allow userspace to specify the scope of IPv6 addresses in
a backwards-compatible way: if the scope passed in is zero,
use the old behaviour of automatically determining the
scope based on the address.

Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Colitti <redacted>

Hi Lorenzo,

I remember someone proposing a similar patch before and it was not accepted, do
you have a use case for doing this?  It just seems like it will cause problems.

Also, there are other parts of the kernel (NFS, SCTP, IPv6 multicast) that are
still calling ipv6_addr_scope() on a plain address - won't those be broken since
they'll return the correct, RFC-implied scope?

-Brian