Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 27 Jan 2015 11:15:56 +0000 | From | Stathis Voukelatos <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] net: Linn Ethernet Packet Sniffer driver |
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Hi Daniel,
On 26/01/15 10:10, Daniel Borkmann wrote: >> Hello Daniel. Thank you for your feedback. >> Packet sockets could also be used for the driver interface to >> user space, however I think that both approaches would require the same >> amount of maintenance. We need to maintain a protocol consisting of >> a set of messages or commands that user space can use to communicate >> with the driver in order to configure the H/W and retrieve results. >> We could use packet sockets to send those messages too, but I thought >> netlink already provides a message exchange framework that we could >> make use of. > > When using packet sockets and your driver as a backend feeding them, > users can see that there's an extra capturing/monitoring netdev present, > all libpcap-based tools such as tcpdump et al would work out of the box > w/o adapting any code, and as an admin you can also see what users/tools > are making of use of the device through packet sockets. I couldn't parse > the exact motivation from the commit message of why avoiding all this is > better? > > Thanks, > Daniel > > Just wanted to clarify some implementation details for your approach. - The driver would need to create and register two net_device instances. One for sniffing Ethernet TX packets and one for RX. - Would the control interface for the sniffer in that case need to be through private socket ioctls (ie SIOCDEVPRIVATE + x ioctl ids)? - For each ethernet packet that matches the command string the sniffer returns some data bytes and optionally a timestamp (depending on the command string). Would a new protocol need to be added in <linux/if_ether.h> in order to deliver that data to user space through a packet socket?
Thanks, Stathis
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