Re: [PATCH net-next v4 01/22] rtnetlink: provide permanent hardware address in RTM_NEWLINK

[David Miller]

From: Michal Kubecek <mkubecek@xxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2019 14:40:21 +0100 (CET)

> Permanent hardware address of a network device was traditionally provided
> via ethtool ioctl interface but as Jiri Pirko pointed out in a review of
> ethtool netlink interface, rtnetlink is much more suitable for it so let's
> add it to the RTM_NEWLINK message.
> 
> As permanent address is not modifiable, reject userspace requests
> containing IFLA_PERM_ADDRESS attribute.
> 
> Note: we already provide permanent hardware address for bond slaves;
> unfortunately we cannot drop that attribute for backward compatibility
> reasons.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Michal Kubecek <mkubecek@xxxxxxx>

Jakub asked if we should check the perm_addr and if it is set.

I would say no, in order to be consistent with what ethtool does which
is that it does not check.