Re: [BUG] socket buffer size different then set

From: Andi Kleen (ak@suse.de)
Date: Sat Apr 22 2000 - 03:18:19 EST


Kurt Roeckx <Q@ping.be> writes:

> On Fri, Apr 21, 2000 at 10:48:10AM -0700, David S. Miller wrote:
> > Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2000 19:37:17 +0200
> > From: Kurt Roeckx <Q@ping.be>
> >
> > Is this a bug, or normal behaviour?
> >
> > This is normal behavior.
>
> May I ask why? Other OS's don't seem to do this.

This must be a FAQ by now:

Linux reserves half of the socket buffer for metadata (skbuff headers etc.)
BSD doesn't do that. Most programs using SO_SNDBUF/SO_RCVBUF didn't expect
this, because traditional BSD does not do metadata accounting, and on Linux
they ended up with too small effective buffers. To fix this Linux always
doubles the buffer internally to stay compatible.

This is documented in socket(7) BTW, please next time to RTFM first.

-Andi

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