[Bridge] rstpd & 2.4

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:26:55 +0200
Rodolfo Giometti <giometti at enneenne.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 02, 2010 at 09:21:48AM -0700, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> 
> > The 2.4 kernel is missing all the hooks to provide user level STP.
> > The startup is not the big issue, the real problem is that the
> > kernel doesn't have hooks to control port state from user space,
> > and the spanning tree packets may not be visible to user space
> > application either.
> > 
> > Sigh, 2.4 is at least 5 years old by now.
> 
> Hello, I'm going to start backport of rstpd to kernel 2.4 series and
> I'd like having some advices from you.
> 
> Regarding the bridge controls I can add to the current sysfs interface
> the old ioctl interface as the old bridge-utils did. Do you think I
> can contribute to the rstpd code in order to support such interface or
> you have no interest in doing it?

I won't put in 2.6 code.  If you wan to put in 2.4, contact
the 2.4 kernel maintainer.

> The problem of controlling the port state from user space can be
> resolved by adding the missing netlink commands into the kernel code.
> 
> In the end, spanning tree packets may be captured as tcpdump do, is
> that right?

That is how I did it since RSTP needs to see ethernet headers.