I am trying to make a health monitor from a kernel module to a userspace service. I read about netlink sockets, but everything I have read says you must modify netlink.h to include your new netlink family type, and compile the kernel.
The entire reason I am using a kernel module is so I dont have to recompile the kernel, and can do everything with a stock kernel. Could I just define my family inside my kernel module rather than in netlink.h?

If not I noticed there are also some families that if nothing else is using them I could just use those. Like any of these.
Thanks.

Hey,

I'm not completely sure if this solves your problem, because I don't remember the complete functionality of 'Generic Netlink' and I'm too lazy to read the article again :-), but please check out this:

http://lwn.net/Articles/208755/

Generic netlink allows you to multiplex the available netlink busses, so maybe you could reuse existing busses without defining your own family.

- Andi -

It looks like that might work.

Thanks.