packet: nlmon: virtual netlink monitoring device for packet sockets

Currently, there is no good possibility to debug netlink traffic that
is being exchanged between kernel and user space. Therefore, this patch
implements a netlink virtual device, so that netlink messages will be
made visible to PF_PACKET sockets. Once there was an approach with a
similar idea [1], but it got forgotten somehow.

I think it makes most sense to accept the "overhead" of an extra netlink
net device over implementing the same functionality from PF_PACKET
sockets once again into netlink sockets. We have BPF filters that can
already be easily applied which even have netlink extensions, we have
RX_RING zero-copy between kernel- and user space that can be reused,
and much more features. So instead of re-implementing all of this, we
simply pass the skb to a given PF_PACKET socket for further analysis.

Another nice benefit that comes from that is that no code needs to be
changed in user space packet analyzers (maybe adding a dissector, but
not more), thus out of the box, we can already capture pcap files of
netlink traffic to debug/troubleshoot netlink problems.

Also thanks goes to Thomas Graf, Flavio Leitner, Jesper Dangaard Brouer.

 [1] http://marc.info/?l=linux-netdev&m=113813401516110

Signed-off-by: Daniel Borkmann <dborkman@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/drivers/net/Makefile b/drivers/net/Makefile
index ef3d090efedf..3fef8a81c0f6 100644
--- a/drivers/net/Makefile
+++ b/drivers/net/Makefile
@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ obj-$(CONFIG_TUN) += tun.o
 obj-$(CONFIG_VETH) += veth.o
 obj-$(CONFIG_VIRTIO_NET) += virtio_net.o
 obj-$(CONFIG_VXLAN) += vxlan.o
+obj-$(CONFIG_NLMON) += nlmon.o
 
 #
 # Networking Drivers