Hi Sergey, > Wow, this is a perfect solution! I just could not help but praise this > proposal :) Heh. > When researching the latest WWAN device drivers and related > discussions, I began to assume that implementing the netdev management > API without the dummy (no-op) netdev is only possible using genetlink. > But this usage of a regular device specified by its name as a parent > for netdev creation is so natural and clear that I believe in RTNL > again. > > Let me place my 2 cents. Maybe the parent device attribute should be > made generic? E.g. call it IFLA_PARENT_DEV_NAME, with usage semantics > similar to the IFLA_LINK attribute for VLAN interfaces. The case when > a user needs to create a netdev on behalf of a regular device is not > WWAN specific, IMHO. So, other drivers could benefit from such > attribute too. To be honest, I can not recall any driver that could > immediately start using such attribute, but the situation with the > need for such attribute seems to be quite common. That's a good question/thought. I mean, in principle this is trivial, right? Just add a IFLA_PARENT_DEV_NAME like you say, and use it instead of IFLA_WWAN_DEV_NAME. It'd come out of tb[] instead of data[] and in this case would remove the need to add the additional data[] argument to rtnl_create_link() in my patch, since it's in tb[] then. The only thing I'd be worried about is that different implementations use it for different meanings, but I guess that's not that big a deal? johannes
