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The various forms of allocating a netdevice.
From netdevice.h
, optional private data is stored (aligned) after the end of the structure:
static inline void *netdev_priv(const struct net_device *dev) { return (char *)dev + ALIGN(sizeof(struct net_device), NETDEV_ALIGN); }
#define NETDEV_ALIGN 32
Explanation of NETDEV_ALIGN
here.
The base allocation routine from net/core/dev.c
for allocating a single device:
/** * alloc_netdev_mqs - allocate network device * @sizeof_priv: size of private data to allocate space for * @name: device name format string * @name_assign_type: origin of device name * @setup: callback to initialize device * @txqs: the number of TX subqueues to allocate * @rxqs: the number of RX subqueues to allocate * * Allocates a struct net_device with private data area for driver use * and performs basic initialization. Also allocates subqueue structs * for each queue on the device. */ struct net_device *alloc_netdev_mqs(int sizeof_priv, const char *name, unsigned char name_assign_type, void (*setup)(struct net_device *), unsigned int txqs, unsigned int rxqs) { struct net_device *dev; unsigned int alloc_size; struct net_device *p; BUG_ON(strlen(name) >= sizeof(dev->name)); if (txqs < 1) { pr_err("alloc_netdev: Unable to allocate device with zero queues\n"); return NULL; } if (rxqs < 1) { pr_err("alloc_netdev: Unable to allocate device with zero RX queues\n"); return NULL; } alloc_size = sizeof(struct net_device); if (sizeof_priv) { /* ensure 32-byte alignment of private area */ alloc_size = ALIGN(alloc_size, NETDEV_ALIGN); alloc_size += sizeof_priv; } /* ensure 32-byte alignment of whole construct */ alloc_size += NETDEV_ALIGN - 1; p = kvzalloc(alloc_size, GFP_KERNEL | __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL); if (!p) return NULL; ... snip ...
Not a lot of drivers call this routine directly given that you can call more convenient wrappers (see below).
From net/ethernet/net.c
:
struct net_device *alloc_etherdev_mqs(int sizeof_priv, unsigned int txqs, unsigned int rxqs) { return alloc_netdev_mqs(sizeof_priv, "eth%d", NET_NAME_UNKNOWN, ether_setup, txqs, rxqs); }