Peter Memishian writes:
> > That said, there should be a comment added to ip6(7p)
> > for IPV6_MULTICAST_IF, mentioning that the interface
> > index for an interface can change and if an application
> > is interested in this event, it should be on the lookout
> > with a routing socket.
>
> I'd much rather just admonish people against changing the interface index
> in the first place, since there's really no reason to do it -- and indeed,
> AFAIK, no one does. So, again, I think all of this is a non-issue.
I have a hard time imagining when SIOCSLIFINDEX (or SIOCSIFINDEX)
could ever be the right thing to do. The existence of it looks to me
like a bug, not a feature. To me, it's roughly equivalent to having a
setpid() interface.
The only reference to this that I can find is a fairly dubious-looking
patch in HP/UX, where they didn't get ifIndex on lo0 right.
I think I'd rather see the 'admonishment' be of the form EINVAL rather
than just (or only) documentation. Perhaps EOFing it now would be a
good approach.
It seems to have shown up in 1995, in the same delta ("Phani's CIDR
changes") that added SIOCGIFINDEX. It's hard to tell, but I suspect
that it was just a case of parallelism -- every 'get' should have a
corresponding 'set' -- and not something that was ever needed or
useful.
--
James Carlson, KISS Network <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084
MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
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