Re: [Patch net v2] ip_gre: set dev->hard_header_len and dev->needed_headroom properly

[Xie He <xie.he.0141@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Oct 14, 2020 at 1:19 PM Willem de Bruijn
<willemdebruijn.kernel@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2020 at 3:48 PM Xie He <xie.he.0141@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I thought we agreed that ideally GRE devices would not have
> > header_ops. Currently GRE devices (in normal situations) indeed do not
> > use header_ops (and use ARHPHRD_IPGRE as dev->type). I think we should
> > keep this behavior.
> >
> > To solve the problem of the same dev->type having different
> > hard_header_len values which you mentioned. I think we should create a
> > new dev->type (ARPHRD_IPGRE_SPECIAL) for GRE devices that use
> > header_ops.
> >
> > Also, for collect_md, I think we should use ARHPHRD_IPGRE. I see no
> > reason to use ARPHRD_NONE.
>
> What does ARPHRD_IPGRE define beyond ARPHRD_NONE? And same for
> ARPHRD_TUNNEL variants. If they are indistinguishable, they are the
> same and might as well have the same label.

It is indeed reasonable to keep devices indistinguishable to each
other having the same dev->type label. But I see a lot of devices in
the kernel without header_ops having different dev->type labels. For
example, ARPHRD_SLIP should be the same as ARPHRD_RAWIP. One feature
distinguishing these devices might be their dev->mtu.

GRE devices may have their special dev->mtu determined by the maximum
IP packet size and the GRE header length.

For ARPHRD_TUNNEL, it may also have its own dev->mtu. I also see it
has header_ops->parse_protocol (but it doesn't have
header_ops->create).