Commit 309b905deee5 ("ipv6: convert CONFIG_IPV6 to built-in
only and clean up Kconfigs") started to call inet6_init() as
device_initcall().
It explains the reason as a race condition on IPv6 addrconf,
but this is not accurate.
The change initially used fs_initcall() but switched to
device_initcall() due to the null-ptr-deref stack trace in
the link below.
It happened because blackhole_netdev_init() uses device_initcall()
and blackhole_netdev was NULL when addrconf_init() called
ipv6_add_dev(blackhole_netdev).
Due to the order in Kbuild,
$ cat -n Kbuild | grep -E "(drivers|net)"
111 obj-y += drivers/
114 obj-$(CONFIG_NET) += net/
using device_initcall() for IPv6 allows built-in drivers to
be initialised earlier, which requires unnecessary NULL checks.
For the same ordering reason, IPv4 uses late_initcall() to
initialise blackhole_netdev.
Given loopback_net_ops is registered in net_dev_init() at
subsys_initcall(), blackhole_netdev_init() can be called
after that.
In addition, some places assume that IPv4 must be initialised
before IPv6. For example, mptcp_proto_v6_init() copies
mptcp_prot to mptcp_v6_prot, which would otherwise have NULL
mptcp_v6_prot.h.hashinfo.
Let's explicitly order blackhole_netdev_init() -> inet_init()
-> inet6_init() before device_initcall() with 3 different
initcall levels:
subsys_initcall : 4 : net_dev_init()
subsys_initcall_sync : 4s : blackhole_netdev_init()
fs_initcall : 5 : inet_init()
fs_initcall_sync : 5s : inet6_init()
device_initcall : 6 : built-in drivers
Note that both IPv4 and IPv6 can still use fs_initcall() thanks
to the order in net/Makefile, but explicit ordering would be
less error-prone.
$ cat -n net/Makefile | grep ipv
17 obj-$(CONFIG_INET) += ipv4/
22 obj-y += ipv6/
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/20260309074758.0ea95a18@kernel.org/ (local)
Signed-off-by: Kuniyuki Iwashima <kuniyu@google.com>
---
Cc: Fernando Fernandez Mancera <redacted>
---
drivers/net/loopback.c | 2 +-
net/ipv6/af_inet6.c | 2 +-
2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/drivers/net/loopback.c b/drivers/net/loopback.c
index 1fb6ce6843ad..55ecd5ebac0f 100644
--- a/drivers/net/loopback.c
+++ b/drivers/net/loopback.c
@@ -289,4 +289,4 @@ static int __init blackhole_netdev_init(void)
return 0;
}
-device_initcall(blackhole_netdev_init);
+subsys_initcall_sync(blackhole_netdev_init);
diff --git a/net/ipv6/af_inet6.c b/net/ipv6/af_inet6.c
index f0efdc13baf4..a9b8b4b42a1a 100644
--- a/net/ipv6/af_inet6.c
+++ b/net/ipv6/af_inet6.c
@@ -1217,4 +1217,4 @@ static int __init inet6_init(void)
proto_unregister(&tcpv6_prot);
goto out;
}
-device_initcall(inet6_init);
+fs_initcall_sync(inet6_init);
--
2.56.0.rc1.315.gc6ed9934b7-goog