Re: [libvirt] [PATCH] util: allow tap-based guest interfaces to have MAC address prefix 0xFE

Back in July 2010, commit 6ea90b84 (meant to resolve https://bugzilla.redhat.com/571991 ) added code to set the MAC address of any tap device to the associated guest interface's MAC, but with the first byte replaced with 0xFE. This was done in order to assure that 1) the tap MAC and guest interface MAC were different (otherwise L2 forwarding through the tap would not work, and the kernel would repeatedly issue a warning stating as much). 2) any bridge device that had one of these taps attached would *not* take on the MAC of the tap (leading to network instability as guests started and stopped) A couple years later, https://bugzilla.redhat.com/798467 was filed, complaining that a user could configure a tap-based guest interface to have a MAC address that itself had a first byte of 0xFE, silently (other than the kernel warning messages) resulting in a non-working configuration. This was fixed by commit 5d571045, which logged an error and failed the guest start / interface attach if the MAC's first byte was 0xFE. Although this restriction only reduces the potential pool of MAC addresses from 2^46 (last two bits of byte 1 must be set to 10) by 2^32 (still 4 orders of magnitude larger than the entire IPv4 address space), it also means that management software that autogenerates MAC addresses must have special code to avoid an 0xFE prefix. Now after 7 years, someone has noticed this restriction and requested that we remove it. So instead of failing when 0xFE is found as the first byte, this patch removes the restriction by just replacing the first byte in the tap device MAC with 0xFA if the first byte in the guest interface is 0xFE. 0xFA is the next-highest value that still has 10 as the lowest two bits, and still 2) meets the requirement of "tap MAC must be different from guest interface MAC", and 3) is high enough that there should never be an issue of the attached bridge device taking on the MAC of the tap. The result is that *any* MAC can be chosen by management software (although it would still not work correctly if a multicast MAC (lowest bit of first byte set to 1) was chosen), but that's a different issue). Signed-off-by: Laine Stump <laine(a)redhat.com&gt; --- Yes, I find it slightly problematic that the same setting is in two different places in the code, but 1) that is pre-existing, and 2) if I moved the MAC address setting down one level into virNetDevTapCreate(), the code would *still* need to be duplicated, since there are two different implementations of virNetDevTapCreate(). If anyone is bothered by this, then I can resubmit with an extra patch to add a new virNetDevTapCreate() that just calls a platform-specific virNetDevTapCreateInternal(), then sets the tap mac address. Only by request though :-). src/qemu/qemu_interface.c | 11 ++++++++++- src/util/virnetdevtap.c | 26 ++++++++++++-------------- 2 files changed, 22 insertions(+), 15 deletions(-)