rtnetlink: Link address family API

Each net_device contains address family specific data such as
per device settings and statistics. We already expose this data
via procfs/sysfs and partially netlink.

The netlink method requires the requester to send one RTM_GETLINK
request for each address family it wishes to receive data of
and then merge this data itself.

This patch implements a new API which combines all address family
specific link data in a new netlink attribute IFLA_AF_SPEC.
IFLA_AF_SPEC contains a sequence of nested attributes, one for each
address family which in turn defines the structure of its own
attribute. Example:

   [IFLA_AF_SPEC] = {
       [AF_INET] = {
           [IFLA_INET_CONF] = ...,
       },
       [AF_INET6] = {
           [IFLA_INET6_FLAGS] = ...,
           [IFLA_INET6_CONF] = ...,
       }
   }

The API also allows for address families to implement a function
which parses the IFLA_AF_SPEC attribute sent by userspace to
implement address family specific link options.

Signed-off-by: Thomas Graf <tgraf@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
3 files changed