On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 02:06:49AM -0700, Guy Harris wrote: | On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 10:36:58AM +0200, Hannes Gredler wrote: | > find attached a patch that allows protocol dissectors to | > register their well known MAC-addresses; | | Hmm. | | You could also add to "/etc/ethers" on UNIX systems, or to the "ethers" | file in the Ethereal installation directory on Windows, entries for the | MAC addresses in question; that wouldn't require any code changes. | If it's inconvenient or undesirable to add them to "/etc/ethers" on | UNIX, we could modify "initialize_ethers()" in "epan/resolv.c" to read a | file in both the "get_datafile_dir()" and the "get_systemfile_dir()" | directory, if those two routines don't return the same path (on Windows, | they do). | | We could then ship an "ethers" file with Ethereal that contains | well-known MAC addresses - and that could be updated with no code | changes.
no doubt ... that was the workaround in the past ... IMHO it does make sense that these _protocol-specific_ [thats the important keyword here] MAC-addresses are registered by the dissector; sure we could start messing up with files, however these well-known MACs are specified in ISO10589 [10 years old spec] and it is unlikely that they do change in the near future; so i am in favour of hardcoding them into the protocol; the ethers files should be used just for site-local MAC address definitions; thoughts ? /hannes
