Re: [PATCH iproute2] iplink: work around rtattr length limits for IFLA_VFINFO_LIST

On Mon, Jan 18, 2021 at 9:49 AM David Ahern [off-list ref] wrote:

Different bug, different solution required. The networking stack hits
these kind of scalability problems from time to time with original
uapis, so workarounds are needed. One example is rtmsg which only allows
255 routing tables, so RTA_TABLE attribute was added as a u32. Once a
solution is found for the VF problem, iproute2 can be enhanced to
accommodate.

The problem is even worse, because user space already depends on the
broken behavior. Erroring out will cause the whole ip link show
command to fail, which works today. Even though the VF list is bust,
the rest of the netdevs are still dumped correctly. A hard fail would
break those too.

Regards,
Edwin Peer