Re: [PATCH net v2] ipv4: fib: treat an unbuildable encapsulation as a nexthop mismatch

[Ido Schimmel]

On Mon, Sep 21, 2026 at 03:07:30PM +0200, Gabriel Goller wrote:
> fib_encap_match() builds the requested lwtunnel state and compares it
> against the nexthop of a candidate route. When lwtunnel_build_state()
> failed it left result at 0, which is interpreted as "the nexthop
> matches", so fib_nh_match() continues to compare only oif and gateway.
> 
> So if there comes along a RTM_DELROUTE which carries an encapsulation
> the kernel rejects, it could delete a different route with a different
> encapsulation.
> 
> Report a mismatch instead. This also covers LWTUNNEL_ENCAP_NONE, which
> lwtunnel_build_state() rejects with -EINVAL, so the separate check for
> it can go away. It used to claim a match for an encapsulation type the
> kernel refuses to build.
> 
> Fixes: 571e722676fe ("ipv4: support for fib route lwtunnel encap attributes")
> Signed-off-by: Gabriel Goller <g.goller@xxxxxxxxxxx>

I asked Claude to check if this can result in routes that are no longer
deleted and it came up with the following scenario which I verified:

Before:

# ip link add name dummy1 up type dummy
# ip route add 192.0.2.0/24 encap bpf xmit obj ./lwt_ok.o sec xmit dev dummy1
# ip route flush dev dummy1
# ip route show

After:

# ip link add name dummy1 up type dummy
# ip route add 192.0.2.0/24 encap bpf xmit obj ./lwt_ok.o sec xmit dev dummy1
# ip route flush dev dummy1
Failed to send flush request: No such process
# ip route show
192.0.2.0/24  encap bpf xmit lwt_ok.o:[xmit] dev dummy1 scope link

The flush is dump followed by delete and bpf_fill_encap_info() doesn't
fill enough information for bpf_build_state() to reconstruct the state
and it returns an error.

I don't know if anyone is relying on this behavior, but AFAIK nobody
complained about the issue that this patch is fixing for 11 years and
according to [1] you didn't hit it either. Given the above and the fact
that the modern alternative (nexthop objects) avoids this issue, I'm
tempted to keep the code as-is.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/arEQHeBlqKWCu3l5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/