Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:33:03 -0500 From: Brooks Davis <brooks@freebsd.org> To: "Li, Qing" <qing.li@bluecoat.com> Cc: d@delphij.net, freebsd-net@freebsd.org, Qing Li <qingli@freebsd.org>, "Andrey V. Elsukov" <bu7cher@yandex.ru>, Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org>, "Bjoern A. Zeeb" <bzeeb-lists@lists.zabbadoz.net> Subject: Re: RFC: interface description Message-ID: <20090814193303.GA21941@lor.one-eyed-alien.net> In-Reply-To: <B583FBF374231F4A89607B4D08578A430503351D@bcs-mail03.internal.cacheflow.com> References: <4A83EEA8.5080202@delphij.net> <20090813182918.S93661@maildrop.int.zabbadoz.net> <B583FBF374231F4A89607B4D08578A430503351D@bcs-mail03.internal.cacheflow.com>
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On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 10:49:24AM -0700, Li, Qing wrote:
> >
> > 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.
>
> 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.
I think this is a decently compelling argument for in-kernel
descriptions. They do solve some synchronization issues and one pointer
is probably an acceptable price to pay given all the edge cases related
to keeping a file in sync if you went the totally user land route.
I general, I don't think we should try too hard to solve every problem
here. Adding a pointer to ifnet, a quick get/set ioctl, ifconfig
support, and support for ifdesc_<ifp> or similar variables in rc.conf
is probably as much as makes sense to do. This is mostly a feature for
appliance builders. If I were working on adding the ability to slim down
ifnet to the base system, I'd certainly make this an optional feature,
but there are much fatter targets at the moment.
-- Brooks
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