On 12/23/2019 2:05 PM, Michal Kubecek wrote:

On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 08:52:01AM -0800, Florian Fainelli wrote:

quoted

Hi Michal,

On 12/22/2019 3:45 PM, Michal Kubecek wrote:

quoted

This is first part of netlink based alternative userspace interface for
ethtool. It aims to address some long known issues with the ioctl
interface, mainly lack of extensibility, raciness, limited error reporting
and absence of notifications. The goal is to allow userspace ethtool
utility to provide all features it currently does but without using the
ioctl interface. However, some features provided by ethtool ioctl API will
be available through other netlink interfaces (rtnetlink, devlink) if it's
more appropriate.

The interface uses generic netlink family "ethtool" and provides multicast
group "monitor" which is used for notifications. Documentation for the
interface is in Documentation/networking/ethtool-netlink.rst file. The
netlink interface is optional, it is built when CONFIG_ETHTOOL_NETLINK
(bool) option is enabled.

There are three types of request messages distinguished by suffix "_GET"
(query for information), "_SET" (modify parameters) and "_ACT" (perform an
action). Kernel reply messages have name with additional suffix "_REPLY"
(e.g. ETHTOOL_MSG_SETTINGS_GET_REPLY). Most "_SET" and "_ACT" message types
do not have matching reply type as only some of them need additional reply
data beyond numeric error code and extack. Kernel also broadcasts
notification messages ("_NTF" suffix) on changes.

Thanks for re-posting these patches again, would you have ethtool and
iproute2 branches with your latest ethnl patches applied? I did find
your ethnl directory on your github, but it applies to a slightly oldish
ethtool version. If you could maintain forks with an "ethnl" branch
there, that would help greatly.

The iproute2 patch (adding display of permanent hardware address) is in
iproute2 "next" tree. As for (userspace) ethtool code, at the moment
it's not in a presentable state. As I wanted on getting v8 out as soon
as possible, I focused on making it work somehow so that I can test the
kernel patchset. So at the moment, the userspace series is still in the
form of an older one (implementing older UAPI) plus one bit "work in
progress" patch adapting it to current UAPI.

The userspace code also still doesn't look the way I would like it to.
I would like to spend some more time on it in second half of this week
and then I plan to also update the repository on github.

OK, no problem. The patches do look fine to me with a few comments here
and there. I hope Jiri likes the user space ABI now, as it would be good
to get your changes included, from there we can have many more hands to
help with converting/extending the existing ioctl() interface.
-- 
Florian