The process below was broken and is fixed with this patch.

//add a simple action and give it an instance id of 1
sudo tc actions add action simple sdata "foobar" index 1
//create a filter which binds to simple action id 1
sudo tc filter add dev $DEV parent ffff: protocol ip prio 1 u32\
match ip dst 17.0.0.1/32 flowid 1:10 action simple index 1

Message before fix was:
RTNETLINK answers: Invalid argument
We have an error talking to the kernel
Signed-off-by: Jamal Hadi Salim <jhs@mojatatu.com>
Reviewed-by: Cong Wang <xiyou.wangcong@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>