[PATCH net 9/9] batman-adv: dat: fix tie-break for candidate selection

Simon Wunderlich <[email protected]> Wed, 8 Jul 2026 11:18:21 +0200
Newsgroups org.open-mesh.lists.batman,org.kernel.vger.netdev,org.kernel.vger.stable
Message-ID <[email protected]>
From: Sven Eckelmann <[email protected]>

The original version of the candidate selection for DAT attempted to
compare both candidate and max_orig_node to identify which has the smaller
MAC address. This comparison is required as tie-break when a hash collision
happened.

But the used function returned 0 when the function was not equal and a
non-zero value when it was equal. As result, the actually selected
node was dependent on the order of entries in the orig_hash and not
actually on the mac addresses. The last originator in the hash collision
would always win.

To have a proper ordering, it must diff the actual MAC address bytes and
reject the candidate when the diff is not smaller than 0.

Cc: [email protected]
Fixes: 785ea1144182 ("batman-adv: Distributed ARP Table - create DHT helper functions")
Signed-off-by: Sven Eckelmann <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Simon Wunderlich <[email protected]>
---
 net/batman-adv/distributed-arp-table.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/net/batman-adv/distributed-arp-table.c b/net/batman-adv/distributed-arp-table.c
index c40c9e02391be..a6fe4820f65b9 100644
--- a/net/batman-adv/distributed-arp-table.c
+++ b/net/batman-adv/distributed-arp-table.c
@@ -546,7 +546,7 @@ static bool batadv_is_orig_node_eligible(struct batadv_dat_candidate *res,
 	 * the one with the lowest address
 	 */
 	if (tmp_max == max && max_orig_node &&
-	    batadv_compare_eth(candidate->orig, max_orig_node->orig))
+	    memcmp(candidate->orig, max_orig_node->orig, ETH_ALEN) >= 0)
 		goto out;
 
 	ret = true;
-- 
2.47.3