netlink: change return-value logic of netlink_broadcast()

Currently, netlink_broadcast() reports errors to the caller if no
messages at all were delivered:

1) If, at least, one message has been delivered correctly, returns 0.
2) Otherwise, if no messages at all were delivered due to skb_clone()
   failure, return -ENOBUFS.
3) Otherwise, if there are no listeners, return -ESRCH.

With this patch, the caller knows if the delivery of any of the
messages to the listeners have failed:

1) If it fails to deliver any message (for whatever reason), return
   -ENOBUFS.
2) Otherwise, if all messages were delivered OK, returns 0.
3) Otherwise, if no listeners, return -ESRCH.

In the current ctnetlink code and in Netfilter in general, we can add
reliable logging and connection tracking event delivery by dropping the
packets whose events were not successfully delivered over Netlink. Of
course, this option would be settable via /proc as this approach reduces
performance (in terms of filtered connections per seconds by a stateful
firewall) but providing reliable logging and event delivery (for
conntrackd) in return.

This patch also changes some clients of netlink_broadcast() that
may report ENOBUFS errors via printk. This error handling is not
of any help. Instead, the userspace daemons that are listening to
those netlink messages should resync themselves with the kernel-side
if they hit ENOBUFS.

BTW, netlink_broadcast() clients include those that call
cn_netlink_send(), nlmsg_multicast() and genlmsg_multicast() since they
internally call netlink_broadcast() and return its error value.

Signed-off-by: Pablo Neira Ayuso <pablo@netfilter.org>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

1 files changed, 3 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/lib/kobject_uevent.c b/lib/kobject_uevent.c
index 318328dd..3813102 100644
--- a/lib/kobject_uevent.c
+++ b/lib/kobject_uevent.c
@@ -227,6 +227,9 @@ int kobject_uevent_env(struct kobject *kobj, enum kobject_action action,
 			NETLINK_CB(skb).dst_group = 1;
 			retval = netlink_broadcast(uevent_sock, skb, 0, 1,
 						   GFP_KERNEL);
+			/* ENOBUFS should be handled in userspace */
+			if (retval == -ENOBUFS)
+				retval = 0;
 		} else
 			retval = -ENOMEM;
 	}