[PATCH net-next] netlink: policy: report the big endian attributes
From: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
Date: 2026-09-08 23:55:06
Subsystem:
networking [general], the rest, yaml netlink (ynl) · Maintainers:
"David S. Miller", Eric Dumazet, Jakub Kicinski, Paolo Abeni, Linus Torvalds, Donald Hunter
Paolo pointed out an issue flagged at low priority by Sashiko -
we're currently not handling BE{16,32} attributes in policy dumps.
Commit 3f4285d741b4 ("netlink: specs: fou: local-v4 and peer-v4 are big
endian") flipped two fou attributes from NLA_U32 to NLA_BE32.
This made them vanish from the policy dump.
Follow the YAML spec format and treat byte order as a property of
a u16 / u32 rather than a type of its own. I don't have a strong
preference either way. The YNL format "feels cleaner" but the
kernel's separate type is easier when handling decoding.
I don't think that the policy type is actually usable for decoding
(since it only contains input types) so I went with YNL and added
the separate attr.
A missing byte order means host order, again like in the YAML specs.
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/ab90f970-0ebb-4c07-b7b1-db3f91395116@redhat.com (local)
Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
---
CC: donald.hunter@gmail.com
CC: johannes@sipsolutions.net
CC: fw@strlen.de
CC: pablo@netfilter.org
---
Documentation/netlink/specs/nlctrl.yaml | 15 +++++++++++++++
include/uapi/linux/netlink.h | 14 ++++++++++++++
net/netlink/policy.c | 16 ++++++++++++++--
tools/net/ynl/pyynl/lib/ynl.py | 8 +++++++-
4 files changed, 50 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/netlink/specs/nlctrl.yaml b/Documentation/netlink/specs/nlctrl.yaml
index 8b4472a6aa36..7e7c158e3e73 100644
--- a/Documentation/netlink/specs/nlctrl.yaml
+++ b/Documentation/netlink/specs/nlctrl.yaml@@ -42,6 +42,16 @@ doc: | - bitfield32 - sint - uint + - + name: policy-byte-order + doc: | + Byte order of an integer attribute. Zero is left unused so that it + can be taken to mean host byte order. + enum-name: netlink-policy-byte-order + type: enum + value-start: 1 + entries: + - big-endian attribute-sets: -
@@ -152,6 +162,11 @@ doc: | - name: pad type: pad + - + name: byte-order + doc: Byte order of the attribute, absent means host byte order. + type: u32 + enum: policy-byte-order - name: op-policy-attrs name-prefix: ctrl-attr-policy-
diff --git a/include/uapi/linux/netlink.h b/include/uapi/linux/netlink.h
index f87aaf28a649..82c41aeb4357 100644
--- a/include/uapi/linux/netlink.h
+++ b/include/uapi/linux/netlink.h@@ -329,6 +329,17 @@ enum netlink_attribute_type { NL_ATTR_TYPE_UINT, }; +/** + * enum netlink_policy_byte_order - byte order of an integer attribute + * @NL_POLICY_BYTE_ORDER_BIG_ENDIAN: big endian (network byte order) + * + * Zero is left unassigned so that it keeps meaning host byte order, + * which is also what a missing byte order means. + */ +enum netlink_policy_byte_order { + NL_POLICY_BYTE_ORDER_BIG_ENDIAN = 1, +}; + /** * enum netlink_policy_type_attr - policy type attributes * @NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_UNSPEC: unused
@@ -356,6 +367,8 @@ enum netlink_attribute_type { * bitfield32 type (U32) * @NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_MASK: mask of valid bits for unsigned integers (U64) * @NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_PAD: pad attribute for 64-bit alignment + * @NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_BYTE_ORDER: byte order of an integer attribute, + * &enum netlink_policy_byte_order, absent if host byte order (U32) * * @__NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_MAX: number of attributes * @NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_MAX: highest attribute number
@@ -374,6 +387,7 @@ enum netlink_policy_type_attr { NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_BITFIELD32_MASK, NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_PAD, NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_MASK, + NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_BYTE_ORDER, /* keep last */ __NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_MAX,
diff --git a/net/netlink/policy.c b/net/netlink/policy.c
index 08b006c48f06..574d44b7d518 100644
--- a/net/netlink/policy.c
+++ b/net/netlink/policy.c@@ -234,6 +234,11 @@ int netlink_policy_dump_attr_size_estimate(const struct nla_policy *pt) /* maximum is common, u64 min/max with padding */ return common + 2 * (nla_attr_size(0) + nla_attr_size(sizeof(u64))); + case NLA_BE16: + case NLA_BE32: + /* same as the unsigned types, plus the byte order */ + return common + nla_attr_size(sizeof(u32)) + + 2 * (nla_attr_size(0) + nla_attr_size(sizeof(u64))); case NLA_BITFIELD32: return common + nla_attr_size(sizeof(u32)); case NLA_STRING:
@@ -289,21 +294,28 @@ __netlink_policy_dump_write_attr(struct netlink_policy_dump_state *state, case NLA_U16: case NLA_U32: case NLA_U64: + case NLA_BE16: + case NLA_BE32: case NLA_UINT: case NLA_MSECS: { struct netlink_range_validation range; if (pt->type == NLA_U8) type = NL_ATTR_TYPE_U8; - else if (pt->type == NLA_U16) + else if (pt->type == NLA_U16 || pt->type == NLA_BE16) type = NL_ATTR_TYPE_U16; - else if (pt->type == NLA_U32) + else if (pt->type == NLA_U32 || pt->type == NLA_BE32) type = NL_ATTR_TYPE_U32; else if (pt->type == NLA_U64) type = NL_ATTR_TYPE_U64; else type = NL_ATTR_TYPE_UINT; + if ((pt->type == NLA_BE16 || pt->type == NLA_BE32) && + nla_put_u32(skb, NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_BYTE_ORDER, + NL_POLICY_BYTE_ORDER_BIG_ENDIAN)) + goto nla_put_failure; + if (pt->validation_type == NLA_VALIDATE_MASK) { if (nla_put_u64_64bit(skb, NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_MASK, pt->mask,
diff --git a/tools/net/ynl/pyynl/lib/ynl.py b/tools/net/ynl/pyynl/lib/ynl.py
index 8682bf588e1f..fb5acb8acded 100644
--- a/tools/net/ynl/pyynl/lib/ynl.py
+++ b/tools/net/ynl/pyynl/lib/ynl.py@@ -115,6 +115,7 @@ from .nlspec import SpecFamily NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_BITFIELD32_MASK = 10 NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_PAD = 11 NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_MASK = 12 + NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_BYTE_ORDER = 13 AttrType = Enum('AttrType', ['flag', 'u8', 'u16', 'u32', 'u64', 's8', 's16', 's32', 's64',
@@ -122,6 +123,8 @@ from .nlspec import SpecFamily 'nested', 'nested-array', 'bitfield32', 'sint', 'uint']) + ByteOrder = Enum('ByteOrder', ['big-endian'], start=1) + class NlError(Exception): def __init__(self, nl_msg): self.nl_msg = nl_msg
@@ -158,7 +161,7 @@ from .nlspec import SpecFamily Each policy entry always has a 'type' attribute (e.g. u32, string, nested). Optional attributes depending on the 'type': min-value, - max-value, min-length, max-length, mask. + max-value, min-length, max-length, mask, byte-order. Policies can form infinite nesting loops. These loops are trimmed when policy is converted to a dict with pol.to_dict().
@@ -454,6 +457,9 @@ from .nlspec import SpecFamily policy['bitfield32-mask'] = attr.as_scalar('u32') elif attr.type == Netlink.NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_MASK: policy['mask'] = attr.as_scalar('u64') + elif attr.type == Netlink.NL_POLICY_TYPE_ATTR_BYTE_ORDER: + byte_order = attr.as_scalar('u32') + policy['byte-order'] = Netlink.ByteOrder(byte_order).name return policy
--
2.55.0