Beniamino reported that he was getting an RTM_NEWLINK message for a given interface, after the RTM_DELLINK for it. It turns out that the message is a wireless extensions message, which was sent because the interface had been connected and disconnection while it was deleted caused a wext message.

For its netlink messages, wext uses RTM_NEWLINK, but the message is without all the regular rtnetlink attributes, so "ip monitor link" prints just rudimentary information:

5: wlan1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN group default

    link/ether 02:00:00:00:01:00 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
Deleted 5: wlan1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN group default
    link/ether 02:00:00:00:01:00 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

5: wlan1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP>
link/ether
(from my hwsim reproduction)

This can cause userspace to get confused since it doesn't expect an RTM_NEWLINK message after RTM_DELLINK.

The reason for this is that wext schedules a worker to send out the messages, and the scheduling delay can cause the messages to get out to userspace in different order.

To fix this, have wext register a netdevice notifier and flush out any pending messages when netdevice state changes. This fixes any ordering whenever the original message wasn't sent by a notifier itself.

Reported-by Beniamino Galvani <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by Johannes Berg <[email protected]>

Signed-off-by Greg Kroah-Hartman <[email protected]>

---
 net/wireless/wext-core.c |   51 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----------
 1 file changed, 40 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)

net/wireless/wext-core.c +40 ~~-11~~

@@ -342,6 +342,39 @@ static const int compat_event_type_size[
 
 /* IW event code */
 
+static void wireless_nlevent_flush(void)
+{
+	struct sk_buff *skb;
+	struct net *net;
+
+	ASSERT_RTNL();
+
+	for_each_net(net) {
+		while ((skb = skb_dequeue(&net->wext_nlevents)))
+			rtnl_notify(skb, net, 0, RTNLGRP_LINK, NULL,
+				    GFP_KERNEL);
+	}
+}
+
+static int wext_netdev_notifier_call(struct notifier_block *nb,
+				     unsigned long state, void *ptr)
+{
+	/*
+	 * When a netdev changes state in any way, flush all pending messages
+	 * to avoid them going out in a strange order, e.g. RTM_NEWLINK after
+	 * RTM_DELLINK, or with IFF_UP after without IFF_UP during dev_close()
+	 * or similar - all of which could otherwise happen due to delays from
+	 * schedule_work().
+	 */
+	wireless_nlevent_flush();
+
+	return NOTIFY_OK;
+}
+
+static struct notifier_block wext_netdev_notifier = {
+	.notifier_call = wext_netdev_notifier_call,
+};
+
 static int __net_init wext_pernet_init(struct net *net)
 {
 	skb_queue_head_init(&net->wext_nlevents);

@@ -360,7 +393,12 @@ static struct pernet_operations wext_per
 
 static int __init wireless_nlevent_init(void)
 {
-	return register_pernet_subsys(&wext_pernet_ops);
+	int err = register_pernet_subsys(&wext_pernet_ops);
+
+	if (err)
+		return err;
+
+	return register_netdevice_notifier(&wext_netdev_notifier);
 }
 
 subsys_initcall(wireless_nlevent_init);

@@ -368,17 +406,8 @@ subsys_initcall(wireless_nlevent_init);
 /* Process events generated by the wireless layer or the driver. */
 static void wireless_nlevent_process(struct work_struct *work)
 {
-	struct sk_buff *skb;
-	struct net *net;
-
 	rtnl_lock();
-
-	for_each_net(net) {
-		while ((skb = skb_dequeue(&net->wext_nlevents)))
-			rtnl_notify(skb, net, 0, RTNLGRP_LINK, NULL,
-				    GFP_KERNEL);
-	}
-
+	wireless_nlevent_flush();
 	rtnl_unlock();
 }

Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from [email protected] are

queue-3.14/mac80211-minstrel_ht-set-default-tx-aggregation-timeout-to-0.patch queue-3.14/wext-fix-message-delay-ordering.patch queue-3.14/mac80211-fix-use-of-uninitialised-values-in-rx-aggregation.patch