From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jan 27 17:19:39 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA01973 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 27 Jan 1997 17:19:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from who.cdrom.com (who.cdrom.com [204.216.27.3]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA01940 for ; Mon, 27 Jan 1997 17:19:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from alpo.whistle.com (alpo.whistle.com [207.76.204.38]) by who.cdrom.com (8.7.5/8.6.11) with ESMTP id QAA28209 for ; Mon, 27 Jan 1997 16:25:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from current1.whistle.com (current1.whistle.com [207.76.205.22]) by alpo.whistle.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id QAA10324 for ; Mon, 27 Jan 1997 16:17:59 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <32ED4558.446B9B3D@whistle.com> Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 16:16:24 -0800 From: Julian Elischer Organization: Whistle Communications X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0Gold (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2-CURRENT i386) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Network interfaces: removal of. Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk I have a system with frame relay interfaces, and virtual circuits are reflected by virtual 'interfaces' e.g vc0, vc2 etc. the trouble is that there is no support in the kernel for REMOVING an interface! does anyone have any ideas on this? removal of an interface requires that the interface addresses be freed. this in turn requires that any routes that access that ifa (e.g in a TCP pcb) discover that it is invalid the next time they try use it, and try get a new rtentry/ifa. None of this happens at the moment. Add to that the fact that the linked list of interfaces has no support for removing entries, and that the interface array has no support for re-using entries. The reference counting on rtentries and IFAs is next to useless as so many places don't use them rigorously, which requires hacks to keep them allingned with anything even close to reality.. Is there anyone in the group who feels as though they understand the situation well enough to work with me in trying to clean this up a bit? I have the interest in doing it, but I need someone to guide me a bit as the routing table system still confuses me on a regular basis. julian