Peter Memishian writes: > > I think that's a pretty reasonable alternative. I still think fixing > > the bug would be nice to do, but "not worth the bother and risk" is a > > valid answer. > > I'm unclear how what Seb's proposed is an "alternative" -- it seems like > he's proposing doing nothing. Did I misunderstand?
No, I don't think you did. That was the alternative. > Regarding Seb's comment that "nothing good can possibly come from fixing > this", as I understand the original issue, it was that a fairly simple > user error can leave a twisted wreckage behind that has to be hauled away > via unplumb. On the other hand, in the years it's been there, this is the first I think I've heard a complaint, and it sounds more like puzzlement than smoking wreckage. More of a Henny Youngman joke than anything else. :-> > To that end, do we know if anyone actually depends on > ifconfig working in this manner, or only the behavior of the ioctls that > ifconfig uses working in this manner? If it's the latter, then we could > tighten the ifconfig screws just to eliminate the usability issue. (Then > again, there are so many usability issues with ifconfig -- hence the > tentative plan for ipadm.) We already covered that ... PPP pretends to provide an Ethernet interface to IP, so that (a) IP doesn't have to know anything other than DL_ETHER and (b) IP doesn't have to learn about any system of SAP values other than Ethertypes. Fixing just the user interface in ifconfig (and leaving the kernel bug alone) would break the pppd "plumbed" option, while leaving the rest working. (Nobody seems to know if doing that alone would hurt anything else; X.25 was mentioned as a potential issue.) For what it's worth, I don't see much of a point to fixing a kernel problem by twisting one of the user space utilities around. If we're going to fix it, if we're going to do anything at all, we may as well do it right. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 _______________________________________________ networking-discuss mailing list [email protected]
