From owner-cvs-all  Wed Jul  7  9:45:31 1999
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From: Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
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Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/etc rc.network src/etc/defaults rc.conf
To: rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com (Rodney W. Grimes)
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1999 16:14:51 +0200 (MET DST)
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	cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org
In-Reply-To: <199907071629.JAA38447@gndrsh.aac.dev.com> from "Rodney W. Grimes" at Jul 7, 99 09:29:05 am
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> > >   Modified files:
> > >     etc                  rc.network 
> > >     etc/defaults         rc.conf 

i second the criticism, but see some advantages in using `ifconfig
-l` in many many cases (e.g. diskless setups, bootable CDROM and
other media that might be moved/used by different systems, and
maybe the install scripts as well), especially if one also provides
a variable like ifconfig_default that is not tied to a specific
interface, but instead is used for the first network interface
listed by ifconfig -l ).


In light of this, wouldn't it be a better solution to keep the
variable network_interfaces alive, use `ifconfig -l` in rc.network
only when network_interfaces is set to some special value (e.g.
"automatic" or so), and set it to this special value in
/etc/defaults/rc.conf

This would handle the vast majority of cases leaving full backward
compatibility eg. for install scripts and users with special
configurations.

As for the special value, rc.conf generally uses "NO" when a variable
must be interpreted in a special way, so one could just use the empty
string to mean we want to use `ifconfig -l`. But again for backward
compatibility i guess that some people might depend on
network_interfaces being set to the empty string and this is why i
suggest a different value.

	cheers
	luigi
-----------------------------------+-------------------------------------
  Luigi RIZZO, luigi@iet.unipi.it  . Dip. di Ing. dell'Informazione
  http://www.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/  . Universita` di Pisa
  TEL/FAX: +39-050-568.533/522     . via Diotisalvi 2, 56126 PISA (Italy)

		  http://www.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/ngc99/
====  First International Workshop on Networked Group Communication  ====
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