From owner-cvs-all Sat Jun 17 15:27:57 2000 Delivered-To: cvs-all@freebsd.org Received: from mass.osd.bsdi.com (adsl-63-206-88-224.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [63.206.88.224]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D6C2E37B50F; Sat, 17 Jun 2000 15:27:48 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from msmith@mass.osd.bsdi.com) Received: from mass.osd.bsdi.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mass.osd.bsdi.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA01562; Sat, 17 Jun 2000 15:32:39 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from msmith@mass.osd.bsdi.com) Message-Id: <200006172232.PAA01562@mass.osd.bsdi.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.1.1 10/15/1999 To: "Louis A. Mamakos" Cc: cvs-committers@FreeBSD.ORG, cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/sys sockio.h src/sys/net if.c src/sbin/ifconfig ifconfig.8 ifconfig.c In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 17 Jun 2000 17:43:20 EDT." <200006172143.RAA05513@whizzo.transsys.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 15:32:39 -0700 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > > > > > But how many new media-specific keywords can ifconfig withstand over > > > time? > > > > As many as there are address families that require them. > > > > > I was only suggesting that there be one generic one; perhaps "lladdr" > > > isn't the most mnemonic and something else is more suitable. > > > > Why bother with a keyword at all? I mean, why bother distinguishing > > between "inet" and "ether"? > > I supposed because inet and inet6 are used to specify L3 addresses which > have significant semantic import to the network protocol stacks. These > L2 or physical layer addresses are merely glue to make the "connectedness" > of the network interface work. That's not taking a very abstracted view of things, though. You could argue that the ethernet address has very significant semantic import to the ARP layer as well. > I guess it isn't that big a deal; I'd be more concerned if there wasn't > a way to use the same ioctl to pass the information into the kernel for > different interface types. The rest is just UI sugar coating to make > it easy to use. In practice, I think that we should really use a single ioctl and pass the type and value in separately and let the stack itself decide what to do about it. The current approach is just not dynamic enough. 8( -- \\ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. \\ Mike Smith \\ Tell him he should learn how to fish himself, \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ and he'll hate you for a lifetime. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message