Re: [PATCH net-next v2 04/11] net: add netdev->up protected by netdev_lock()

From: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 19:53:12 -0800

Some uAPI (netdev netlink) hide net_device's sub-objects while
the interface is down to ensure uniform behavior across drivers.
To remove the rtnl_lock dependency from those uAPIs we need a way
to safely tell if the device is down or up.

Add an indication of whether device is open or closed, protected
by netdev->lock. The semantics are the same as IFF_UP, but taking
netdev_lock around every write to ->flags would be a lot of code
churn.

We don't want to blanket the entire open / close path by netdev_lock,
because it will prevent us from applying it to specific structures -
core helpers won't be able to take that lock from any function
called by the drivers on open/close paths.

So the state of the flag is "pessimistic", as in it may report false
negatives, but never false positives.

Reviewed-by: Joe Damato <redacted>
Reviewed-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>

Reviewed-by: Kuniyuki Iwashima <redacted>