[PATCH net-next 1/3] net: ipv4: report multicast group user count

From: Yuyang Huang

Date: Tue Jun 30 2026 - 07:16:03 EST


RTM_GETMULTICAST has been part of the rtnetlink ABI for a long time
and already reports IPv4 multicast group membership through
IFA_MULTICAST and IFA_CACHEINFO. It does not report how many consumers
hold each membership, so userspace still has to parse /proc/net/igmp to
get the Users column.

Add IFA_MC_USERS as a u32 attribute carrying ip_mc_list::users in
RTM_GETMULTICAST replies and entry-lifecycle notifications.

This gives iproute2 enough information to migrate the IPv4 part of
"ip maddr show" from procfs parsing to rtnetlink.

Signed-off-by: Yuyang Huang <sigefriedhyy@xxxxxxxxx>
---
Documentation/netlink/specs/rt-addr.yaml | 4 ++++
include/uapi/linux/if_addr.h | 1 +
net/ipv4/igmp.c | 2 ++
3 files changed, 7 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/netlink/specs/rt-addr.yaml b/Documentation/netlink/specs/rt-addr.yaml
index 163a106c41bb..0ecbd24c890c 100644
--- a/Documentation/netlink/specs/rt-addr.yaml
+++ b/Documentation/netlink/specs/rt-addr.yaml
@@ -123,6 +123,9 @@ attribute-sets:
-
name: proto
type: u8
+ -
+ name: mc-users
+ type: u32


operations:
@@ -176,6 +179,7 @@ operations:
value: 58
attributes: &mcaddr-attrs
- multicast
+ - mc-users
- cacheinfo
dump:
request:
diff --git a/include/uapi/linux/if_addr.h b/include/uapi/linux/if_addr.h
index aa7958b4e41d..7fb630b7fe31 100644
--- a/include/uapi/linux/if_addr.h
+++ b/include/uapi/linux/if_addr.h
@@ -36,6 +36,7 @@ enum {
IFA_RT_PRIORITY, /* u32, priority/metric for prefix route */
IFA_TARGET_NETNSID,
IFA_PROTO, /* u8, address protocol */
+ IFA_MC_USERS, /* u32, multicast group users */
__IFA_MAX,
};

diff --git a/net/ipv4/igmp.c b/net/ipv4/igmp.c
index b6337a47c141..116ce7cec80e 100644
--- a/net/ipv4/igmp.c
+++ b/net/ipv4/igmp.c
@@ -1473,6 +1473,7 @@ int inet_fill_ifmcaddr(struct sk_buff *skb, struct net_device *dev,
ci.ifa_valid = INFINITY_LIFE_TIME;

if (nla_put_in_addr(skb, IFA_MULTICAST, im->multiaddr) < 0 ||
+ nla_put_u32(skb, IFA_MC_USERS, READ_ONCE(im->users)) < 0 ||
nla_put(skb, IFA_CACHEINFO, sizeof(ci), &ci) < 0) {
nlmsg_cancel(skb, nlh);
return -EMSGSIZE;
@@ -1494,6 +1495,7 @@ static void inet_ifmcaddr_notify(struct net_device *dev,

skb = nlmsg_new(NLMSG_ALIGN(sizeof(struct ifaddrmsg)) +
nla_total_size(sizeof(__be32)) +
+ nla_total_size(sizeof(u32)) +
nla_total_size(sizeof(struct ifa_cacheinfo)),
GFP_KERNEL);
if (!skb)
--
2.43.0