Netlink

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Netlink sockets (PF_NETLINK) are a mechanism within Linux to retrieve and manage various aspects of the networking stacks -- they are a Linux-specific extension to the Berkeley Sockets model, and should not be used in portable programs. The information available via netlink sockets was previously available to userspace, if at all, via a collection of <tt>ioctl(2)</tt>s and a grabbag of <tt>get*(2)</tt> custom-purpose system calls; the majority of these are obsoleted by netlink sockets, but still implemented for backwards compatability. [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3549.html RFC 3549] provides a snapshot current as of kernel 2.4.6; the netlink socket interface, however, is prone to change. That doesn't affect RFC 3549 as much as one might think, as it really has nothing to do with the netlink programming model; I suspect it to be a joke Andi Kleen perpetrated knowing that W. Richard Stevens wasn't around to call him out on it anymore.

~~The <tt>netlink(3)</tt> man page includes the following text:~~

~~<pre>NOTES~~

~~It is often better to use netlink via libnetlink than via the low-level~~

kernel interface.</pre>It has been this author's experience that this is untrue; the cold hard reality is that just about anything involving netlink sockets is bound to be unpleasant, usually in the extreme, and libnetlink won't improve things in the slightest.

==IFA_ADDRESS v IFA_LOCAL==

Netlink: Difference between revisions

Dank (talk | contribs)

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 Netlink sockets (PF_NETLINK) are a mechanism within Linux to retrieve and manage various aspects of the networking stacks -- they are a Linux-specific extension to the Berkeley Sockets model, and should not be used in portable programs. The information available via netlink sockets was previously available to userspace, if at all, via a collection of <tt>ioctl(2)</tt>s and a grabbag of <tt>get*(2)</tt> custom-purpose system calls; the majority of these are obsoleted by netlink sockets, but still implemented for backwards compatability. [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3549.html RFC 3549] provides a snapshot current as of kernel 2.4.6; the netlink socket interface, however, is prone to change. That doesn't affect RFC 3549 as much as one might think, as it really has nothing to do with the netlink programming model; I suspect it to be a joke Andi Kleen perpetrated knowing that W. Richard Stevens wasn't around to call him out on it anymore.
-The <tt>netlink(3)</tt> man page includes the following text:
-<pre>NOTES
-       It is often better to use netlink via libnetlink than via the low-level
-       kernel interface.</pre>It has been this author's experience that this is untrue; the cold hard reality is that just about anything involving netlink sockets is bound to be unpleasant, usually in the extreme, and libnetlink won't improve things in the slightest.
 ==IFA_ADDRESS v IFA_LOCAL==