netdev - Re: why is it not allowed to add a new socket protocol family as an external module?

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Message-ID: <20130220152325.64c57d55@samsung-9>
Date:	Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:23:25 -0800
From:	Stephen Hemminger <stephen@...workplumber.org>
To:	Chris Friesen <chris.friesen@...band.com>
Cc:	netdev <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: why is it not allowed to add a new socket protocol family as an
 external module?

On Wed, 20 Feb 2013 10:56:13 -0600
Chris Friesen <chris.friesen@...band.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I was just wondering why the kernel doesn't allow a new network protocol 
> family to be loaded as as a kernel module built outside the kernel 
> source tree.
> 
> Most of the networking code would seem to allow this, but the check for
> "if (ops->family >= NPROTO)" in sock_register() means that only protocol 
> families defined in socket.h can be registered.
> 
> Was this intentional for ideological reasons, or has nobody wanted to be 
> able to add arbitrary network protocols without patching the kernel and 
> rebuilding?
> 

If you want an answer, to the question, use a tool like cscope and
learn to read the kernel code. There are several tables of pointers sized by NPROTO.

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