Based upon initial work by Keiichi Kii <k-keiichi@bx.jp.nec.com>.
This patch introduces support for dynamic reconfiguration (adding, removing
and/or modifying parameters of netconsole targets at runtime) using a
userspace interface exported via configfs. Documentation is also updated
accordingly.
Issues and brief design overview:
(1) Kernel-initiated creation / destruction of kernel objects is not
possible with configfs -- the lifetimes of the "config items" is managed
exclusively from userspace. But netconsole must support boot/module
params too, and these are parsed in kernel and hence netpolls must be
setup from the kernel. Joel Becker suggested to separately manage the
lifetimes of the two kinds of netconsole_target objects -- those created
via configfs mkdir(2) from userspace and those specified from the
boot/module option string. This adds complexity and some redundancy here
and also means that boot/module param-created targets are not exposed
through the configfs namespace (and hence cannot be updated / destroyed
dynamically). However, this saves us from locking / refcounting
complexities that would need to be introduced in configfs to support
kernel-initiated item creation / destroy there.
(2) In configfs, item creation takes place in the call chain of the
mkdir(2) syscall in the driver subsystem. If we used an ioctl(2) to
create / destroy objects from userspace, the special userspace program is
able to fill out the structure to be passed into the ioctl and hence
specify attributes such as local interface that are required at the time
we set up the netpoll. For configfs, this information is not available at
the time of mkdir(2). So, we keep all newly-created targets (via
configfs) disabled by default. The user is expected to set various
attributes appropriately (including the local network interface if
required) and then write(2) "1" to the "enabled" attribute. Thus,
netpoll_setup() is then called on the set parameters in the context of
_this_ write(2) on the "enabled" attribute itself. This design enables
the user to reconfigure existing netconsole targets at runtime to be
attached to newly-come-up interfaces that may not have existed when
netconsole was loaded or when the targets were actually created. All this
effectively enables us to get rid of custom ioctls.
(3) Ultra-paranoid configfs attribute show() and store() operations, with
sanity and input range checking, using only safe string primitives, and
compliant with the recommendations in Documentation/filesystems/sysfs.txt.
(4) A new function netpoll_print_options() is created in the netpoll API,
that just prints out the configured parameters for a netpoll structure.
netpoll_parse_options() is modified to use that and it is also exported to
be used from netconsole.
Signed-off-by: Satyam Sharma <satyam@infradead.org>
Acked-by: Keiichi Kii <k-keiichi@bx.jp.nec.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Satyam Sharma