netlink: make nlmsg_end() and genlmsg_end() void

Contrary to common expectations for an "int" return, these functions
return only a positive value -- if used correctly they cannot even
return 0 because the message header will necessarily be in the skb.

This makes the very common pattern of

  if (genlmsg_end(...) < 0) { ... }

be a whole bunch of dead code. Many places also simply do

  return nlmsg_end(...);

and the caller is expected to deal with it.

This also commonly (at least for me) causes errors, because it is very
common to write

  if (my_function(...))
    /* error condition */

and if my_function() does "return nlmsg_end()" this is of course wrong.

Additionally, there's not a single place in the kernel that actually
needs the message length returned, and if anyone needs it later then
it'll be very easy to just use skb->len there.

Remove this, and make the functions void. This removes a bunch of dead
code as described above. The patch adds lines because I did

-	return nlmsg_end(...);
+	nlmsg_end(...);
+	return 0;

I could have preserved all the function's return values by returning
skb->len, but instead I've audited all the places calling the affected
functions and found that none cared. A few places actually compared
the return value with <= 0 in dump functionality, but that could just
be changed to < 0 with no change in behaviour, so I opted for the more
efficient version.

One instance of the error I've made numerous times now is also present
in net/phonet/pn_netlink.c in the route_dumpit() function - it didn't
check for <0 or <=0 and thus broke out of the loop every single time.
I've preserved this since it will (I think) have caused the messages to
userspace to be formatted differently with just a single message for
every SKB returned to userspace. It's possible that this isn't needed
for the tools that actually use this, but I don't even know what they
are so couldn't test that changing this behaviour would be acceptable.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

1 files changed, 11 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/net/phonet/pn_netlink.c b/net/phonet/pn_netlink.c
index b64151ade6b..54d766842c2 100644
--- a/net/phonet/pn_netlink.c
+++ b/net/phonet/pn_netlink.c
@@ -121,7 +121,8 @@ static int fill_addr(struct sk_buff *skb, struct net_device *dev, u8 addr,
 	ifm->ifa_index = dev->ifindex;
 	if (nla_put_u8(skb, IFA_LOCAL, addr))
 		goto nla_put_failure;
-	return nlmsg_end(skb, nlh);
+	nlmsg_end(skb, nlh);
+	return 0;
 
 nla_put_failure:
 	nlmsg_cancel(skb, nlh);
@@ -190,7 +191,8 @@ static int fill_route(struct sk_buff *skb, struct net_device *dev, u8 dst,
 	if (nla_put_u8(skb, RTA_DST, dst) ||
 	    nla_put_u32(skb, RTA_OIF, dev->ifindex))
 		goto nla_put_failure;
-	return nlmsg_end(skb, nlh);
+	nlmsg_end(skb, nlh);
+	return 0;
 
 nla_put_failure:
 	nlmsg_cancel(skb, nlh);
@@ -282,9 +284,13 @@ static int route_dumpit(struct sk_buff *skb, struct netlink_callback *cb)
 
 		if (addr_idx++ < addr_start_idx)
 			continue;
-		if (fill_route(skb, dev, addr << 2, NETLINK_CB(cb->skb).portid,
-				cb->nlh->nlmsg_seq, RTM_NEWROUTE))
-			goto out;
+		fill_route(skb, dev, addr << 2, NETLINK_CB(cb->skb).portid,
+			   cb->nlh->nlmsg_seq, RTM_NEWROUTE);
+		/* fill_route() used to return > 0 (or negative errors) but
+		 * never 0 - ignore the return value and just go out to
+		 * call dumpit again from outside to preserve the behavior
+		 */
+		goto out;
 	}
 
 out: