Raw structs as network packets (was: Re: svn commit: samba r20943 - in branches/SAMBA_4_0/source/cluster/ctdb/common: .)

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Mon, 2007-01-22 at 03:33 +0000, tridge at samba.org wrote:
> Author: tridge
> Date: 2007-01-22 03:33:12 +0000 (Mon, 22 Jan 2007)
> New Revision: 20943
> 
> WebSVN: http://websvn.samba.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi?view=rev&root=samba&rev=20943
> 
> Log:
> 
> use offsetof() instead of sizeof() - 1 for the packet length
> calculations. It will be interesting to see how portable this is.
> 
> The advantage over the sizeof() method is that it avoids padding
> problems after the data[1] array. That was causing us to get valgrind
> errors.


I know this is a speed hack protocol, but I still think that blasting
raw localhost-endian memory onto the network as a 'network packet' is
incredibly poor protocol design.

Has the overhead of using our NDR engine been measured?  Or at the very
least, can we have all the packets with a fixed endianness, a magic
identifier and a version number?  Byteswapping is a single instruction
on many chips...

At linux.conf.au, you were discussing the need for a wireshark decoder
for this protocol.  How should this handle guessing the protocol,
without any clue as to host endian?

Talking with the SGI folks, they are worried that long term, when real
customers deploy this, they will mix architectures, and even program
versions.  Even if we don't support this (and I think we should at least
try to, for sane combinations), we should at least ensure the protocol
prevents it...

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                                http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team           http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Red Hat Inc.                  http://redhat.com
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