Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 10:07:25 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Cc: nate@mt.sri.com, hosokawa@jp.freebsd.org, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: pccard and -current; a long way to go. :-( Message-ID: <25979.869936845@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 27 Jul 1997 00:49:54 %2B0930." <199707261519.AAA28064@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
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> Because the current startup code is _too_stupid_ to deal with > transient interfaces. This was hashed out ages ago. > > If we accept your model where the system can't start until a network > card is inserted to match the ifconfig_foo lines, I'd be screwed if I > decided to boot without my 'net card to save power. Well, then we have a problem which really needs resolution since it's not going to work well the way it is with the current installation code. Consider: When I do a net install, using either the PAO floppy or some hypothetical pccard-enabled boot.flp image, I fill in all the host/IP/... details in the TCP/IP setup screen and, as is the generic action for all types of installs, sysinstall writes this information into rc.conf, e.g. I now have ifconfig_ed0="..." lines for your PCCARD ethernet device in my particular case. Now I finish the install and come up for the first time off the hard disk. The network is, of course, misconfigured now and we're not going to come up on the net again as configured. The user is confused. FreeBSD's install has left them high and dry. I've also no objection to changing things so that, somehow, a pccard device is somehow recognised and the behavior of adding ifconfig_foo lines is skipped in favor of adding more specialized configuration, but I think that we need to seriously think about our configuration mechanisms and how "dynamism" in your device picture is going to be handled. For a device which may enter and leave the picture at any time, you obviously may wish to treat its configuration data differently. The question is: How exactly? :) Jordan
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