Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 12:48:02 -0700 From: Doug Barton <dougb@FreeBSD.org> To: Fredrik Lindberg <fli+freebsd-net@shapeshifter.se> Cc: freebsd-net@freebsd.org, Pat Lashley <patl+freebsd@volant.org> Subject: Re: Zeroconfig and Multicast DNS Message-ID: <44ECB0F2.9040300@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <44EC90B7.6090908@shapeshifter.se> References: <44E9F991.7020309@shapeshifter.se> <DD49A62B2AB4E38804FB10B6@garrett.local> <44EA1926.2000501@shapeshifter.se> <9C04919EE684029A410DE208@garrett.local> <44EAC40E.9000904@shapeshifter.se> <3E654CC0217F90E20FCD806E@garrett.local> <44EC90B7.6090908@shapeshifter.se>
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Fredrik Lindberg wrote:
> The thing is that I would like to see mDNS in base (and the other
> zeroconfig utilities).
...
> However that doesn't have a chance of happening unless a committer finds
> it interesting.
I find it very interesting. :) One of my side projects at the moment is to
come further up to speed on the subject of multicast DNS in general, so I'm
following this discussion with a great deal of interest. I'd really like to
see FreeBSD take a lead in this area, since the more research I do the more
I am convinced that this, or something very much like it is the future of
end-user network provisioning.
If no one else steps forward, I will be glad to lead the charge to get an
implementation of this committed. Before I do though, we'll need to get some
basic questions answered (some of which have already been discussed here).
1. What are the other *BSDs doing in this area?
2. What are the linux flavors doing?
3. What is the minimal set of features we should support? (I think this list
starts with LLA, but that's just a gut feeling atm.)
4. What are the nice to haves?
5. How does mDNS cooperate/integrate with IPv6?
6. How should the mDNS system integrate with the rest of the FreeBSD system?
I think at minimum anything we import should support nss, but what else do
we need here?
7. How should the sysadmin interact with this, and what knobs should they be
able to twiddle? (LLA address parameters, definitions of unique services,
access limitations ala hosts.allow?)
8. How should applications interact with this system? That includes stuff in
the FreeBSD base, and what APIs to publish for third party stuff. Are there
well established APIs that we should/must support?
9. At some point we have to bring the ports guys in on this too, with a goal
in mind of determining what features we'd need to support in the base to
eliminate the need for an mDNS implementation in ports. (The fact that we
currently have 2, slightly incompatible implementations in ports now is
already giving me a headache.)
10. How do users interact with this? Should there be a utility that allows
users to browse the network to see what services are available?
... and that's just off the top of my head. :)
In order to move this forward my idea would be to get the answers to these,
and any other crucial questions hashed out fairly thoroughly here first.
Then we could post a summary to -arch, preferably along with a link to some
running code, so that it would get wider (and better) review.
So I'm not promising that it'll go in overnight, but I _do_ want something
along this line to go in, so as I said, if no one else steps forward, I'm on
the case.
Brooks, if you're reading this, can I count on you to broach the question
about the Apache license in core@?
Doug
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