> > Now, the IP stack actually assumes that its header is four-byte aligned > > (see comment at NET_IP_ALIGN, although it is not said explicitly that > > the alignment requirement for an IP header is four) so that is actually > > something for the hardware/firmware (!) to do, for example Broadcom > > Good point. In fact IIRC we've always had the policy that drivers > should do their best to generate aligned packets but it is not a > requirement since on some platforms it's more important for the DMA > to be aligned. We still require four-byte alignment, no? > So it's up the platform code to fix up any exceptions should they > show up. > > Daniel, what's the specific case that you had in mind with this > patch? Well. This goes back to a user reporting unaligned accesses on sparc64. Davem thought this came from the ether addr comparisons but the user later reported that the patch from davem didn't fix it, and I think Daniel just made a sweep over all ether addr comparisons replacing them with unaligned ones. johannes
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