[...] > > Seems to me there ought to be something, whether > AF_LINK sockets or > > a higher level abstraction, that does all those > things across multiple > > platforms. > > It sounds like you're volunteering. Would you like > to start such a > project? ;-)
I learned eons ago never to volunteer for anything, and if I've made any exceptions, at least not to admit to them publicly. Nor was I planning to write or port a client for such a thing. It was simply an observation that such a facility seemed to be missing, from the portability difficulties with answers to semi-frequent questions like "how do I find my MAC address in C?" (google for DLPI_DEV SunOS for an example in DLPI, but it needs new interface devs added to actually work), and from simply noting non-IP/ARP packets (Novell IPX, AppleTalk, etc) when having occasion to do a bit of snooping. I can't stop myself from asking questions like "how could porting a client for that be made simpler?", but barring some real need, that's just a reflex; and if no answer is already under consideration, that's fine with me. The reason I'd lean towards AF_LINK sockets if I _did_ have a real need for such a thing is that (at least from the example the above google will retrieve) no two platforms seem to do DLPI quite the same way. The HPUX /dev/dlpi is interesting, but if nobody else does it like that, not much help. And then there's Style 1 vs Style 2, etc. I haven't looked enough to be sure, but I think there's more consensus on what link access should look like with the sockets interface than with DLPI. If someone else perceives a need, they're welcome to it. I'd probably participate (if I could get up to speed on what was involved in a reasonable amount of time), but that's about all I can do. The reason I mentioned it now, was that although it's a bit of a divergence from the subject of libdlpi, it occurred to me that if libdlpi were to be regarded as a public interface, it might be at least helpful across platforms using DLPI if there were some consideration as to whether libdlpi could be implemented on other such platforms, help to minimize differences seen by its users, etc. That's well short of the "loftier" goal, but seems like an opportunity perhaps worth considering. This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ networking-discuss mailing list [email protected]
