documentation error in man 7 rtnetlink

[Justin Cormack]

man 7 rtnetlink says

"The value type for IFLA_STATS is struct net_device_stats."

However this is not the case. After some fruitless coding I discovered that it is actually struct rtnl_link_stats. These structs happen to be the same on 32 bit architectures (as net_device_stats is defined as longs) but not on 64 bit architectures. And the size of the struct sent is always that of rtnl_link_stats, and there are a few comments about this around, but a lot of confusion due to the man page error.

Should be able to verify from the kernel source too, but dont have a reference sorry.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: manpages 3.35-0.1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-24.39-generic 3.2.16
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-24-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu8
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Jun 27 23:19:37 2012
Dependencies:

InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Beta amd64 (20120328)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: manpages
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Justin Cormack (justincormack)]

This man page is also missing a lot of stuff. I think I may just do a large patch for upstream once I have worked everything out. I would mark as low importance, but leave open until man page is useful!

[Stéphane Aulery (lkppo)]

Hello Justin,

This bug have been fixed since 2012-11-11 [1]. If you don't intend to update extensively this man page, we can close this bug as fixed. Upstream have some FIXME in man pages code [2]. Contribute directly to upstream please, we need contributors !!!, or had a FIXME to [2] that explain what to do.

Thans for yours help,

--
Stéphane Aulery

[1] https://git.kernel.org/cgit/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/commit/?id=3036baf00ee7f7ba4c8dcccd12b131a832ccdf61
[2] https://git.kernel.org/cgit/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/man7/rtnetlink.7

[Stéphane Aulery (lkppo)]

In the absence of justin movement, I think this bug is resolved. He can always contact upstream for possible future contribution.