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Date:      Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:49:24 -0700
From:      "Li, Qing" <qing.li@bluecoat.com>
To:        "Bjoern A. Zeeb" <bzeeb-lists@lists.zabbadoz.net>, "Qing Li" <qingli@freebsd.org>
Cc:        freebsd-net@freebsd.org, "Andrey V. Elsukov" <bu7cher@yandex.ru>, d@delphij.net, Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org>
Subject:   RE: RFC: interface description
Message-ID:  <B583FBF374231F4A89607B4D08578A430503351D@bcs-mail03.internal.cacheflow.com>
In-Reply-To: <20090813182918.S93661@maildrop.int.zabbadoz.net>
References:  <4A83EEA8.5080202@delphij.net> <4A840DA1.600@yandex.ru><4A844FF2.9000307@elischer.org> <20090813182918.S93661@maildrop.int.zabbadoz.net>

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>=20
> My point has always been - if I have to add/do an ioctl I can always
> also use a library call that will read it from a .txt, .xml, .db file
> or whatever and I don't have to go to the kernel, handle all the
> string length problems there, ... especially as the kernel cannot do
> anything with that string.
>=20

The interface description feature is a useful feature. Quite a few
products out there actually put a label on the physical box so it's
reasonable to have the ability to label the ports in the kernel.

There are quite a few embedded systems and not-so-standalone boxes
out there that are derivatives of FreeBSD. These systems might not
have the luxury of a file system. And getting coredumps from the
field with such information embedded in the ifnet{} just makes
debugging field issues a little bit easier.

>
> So here comes the usual catch 22 on a classic PC system:
> 	you can change everything.
>
> Using RFC 2553 Section 4 is probably the best indeed but has=20
> drawbacks as well.
>

Seems rather off topic ...

-- Qing





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