Re: [RFC 2/2] xen-netback: disable multicast and use a random hw MAC address

From: Bill Fink
Date: Wed Feb 12 2014 - 12:18:00 EST


On Wed, 12 Feb 2014, Ian Campbell wrote:

> On Tue, 2014-02-11 at 13:53 -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> > Cc'ing kvm folks as they may have a shared interest on the shared
> > physical case with the bridge (non NAT).
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2014-02-10 at 14:29 -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> > >> From: "Luis R. Rodriguez" <mcgrof@xxxxxxxx>
> > >>
> > >> Although the xen-netback interfaces do not participate in the
> > >> link as a typical Ethernet device interfaces for them are
> > >> still required under the current archtitecture. IPv6 addresses
> > >> do not need to be created or assigned on the xen-netback interfaces
> > >> however, even if the frontend devices do need them, so clear the
> > >> multicast flag to ensure the net core does not initiate IPv6
> > >> Stateless Address Autoconfiguration.
> > >
> > > How does disabling SAA flow from the absence of multicast?
> >
> > See patch 1 in this series [0], but I explain the issue I see with
> > this on the cover letter [1].
>
> Oop, I felt like I'd missed some context. Thanks for pointing out that
> it was right under my nose.
>
> > In summary the RFCs on IPv6 make it
> > clear you need multicast for Stateless address autoconfiguration
> > (SLAAC is the preferred acronym) and DAD,
>
> That seems reasonable, but I think is the opposite to what I was trying
> to get at.
>
> Why is it not possible to disable SLAAC and/or DAD even if multicast is
> present?
>
> IOW -- enabling/disabling multicast seems to me to be an odd proxy for
> disabling SLAAC or DAD and AIUI your patch fixes the opposite case,
> which is to avoid SLAAC and DAD on interfaces which don't do multicast
> (which makes sense since those protocols involve multicast).

Forgive me if this doesn't make sense in this context since
I'm not a kernel developer, but I was just wondering if any of
the sysctls:

/proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/<ifc>/disable_ipv6
/proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/<ifc>/accept_dad
/proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/<ifc>/accept_ra
/proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/<ifc>/autoconf

would be apropos for the requirement being discussed.

-Bill
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