From owner-freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Aug 14 17:51:46 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 20F89106568C; Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:51:46 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from qing.li@bluecoat.com) Received: from whisker.bluecoat.com (whisker.bluecoat.com [216.52.23.28]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0654A8FC51; Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:51:45 +0000 (UTC) Received: from bcs-mail03.internal.cacheflow.com ([10.2.2.95]) by whisker.bluecoat.com (8.14.2/8.14.2) with ESMTP id n7EHoKgp026600; Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:50:20 -0700 (PDT) X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.5 Content-class: urn:content-classes:message MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:49:24 -0700 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20090813182918.S93661@maildrop.int.zabbadoz.net> X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: Thread-Topic: RFC: interface description Thread-Index: AcocROe0W5ePmY+QQbyuyIkH+vPOGwAwPAeQ References: <4A83EEA8.5080202@delphij.net> <4A840DA1.600@yandex.ru><4A844FF2.9000307@elischer.org> <20090813182918.S93661@maildrop.int.zabbadoz.net> From: "Li, Qing" To: "Bjoern A. Zeeb" , "Qing Li" Cc: freebsd-net@freebsd.org, "Andrey V. Elsukov" , d@delphij.net, Julian Elischer Subject: RE: RFC: interface description X-BeenThere: freebsd-net@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Networking and TCP/IP with FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:51:46 -0000 >=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