• Jakub Kicinski's avatar
    net: make free_netdev() more lenient with unregistering devices · c269a24c
    Jakub Kicinski authored
    There are two flavors of handling netdev registration:
     - ones called without holding rtnl_lock: register_netdev() and
       unregister_netdev(); and
     - those called with rtnl_lock held: register_netdevice() and
       unregister_netdevice().
    
    While the semantics of the former are pretty clear, the same can't
    be said about the latter. The netdev_todo mechanism is utilized to
    perform some of the device unregistering tasks and it hooks into
    rtnl_unlock() so the locked variants can't actually finish the work.
    In general free_netdev() does not mix well with locked calls. Most
    drivers operating under rtnl_lock set dev->needs_free_netdev to true
    and expect core to make the free_netdev() call some time later.
    
    The part where this becomes most problematic is error paths. There is
    no way to unwind the state cleanly after a call to register_netdevice(),
    since unreg can't be performed fully without dropping locks.
    
    Make free_netdev() more lenient, and defer the freeing if device
    is being unregistered. This allows error paths to simply call
    free_netdev() both after register_netdevice() failed, and after
    a call to unregister_netdevice() but before dropping rtnl_lock.
    
    Simplify the error paths which are currently doing gymnastics
    around free_netdev() handling.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarJakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
    c269a24c
vlan.c 17.6 KB