bpf/pcap are weird
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
green at FreeBSD.org
Wed Nov 5 11:25:31 PST 2003
Okay, this is goofy stuff and breaks a lot of code that otherwise makes
certain assumptions about pcap/bpf that don't work on FreeBSD. Our bpf(4)
doesn't actually care about the non-blocking fd flag, and our pcap(3)
doesn't care at all about BIOCIMMEDIATE. Why do we have BIOCIMMEDIATE? It
seems like it's what SHOULD be implemented with the non-blocking I/O flag
with the exception that if using O_NONBLOCK/FIONBIO you could actually query
for the status, whereas you can't query for BIOCIMMEDIATE since it's only a
SET and not a GET ioctl.
What's up with this? Software that knows about pcap(3) but not bpf(4) on
FreeBSD can't put the interface in the mode it wants to, and the
non-blocking flag is settable and gettable but doesn't do anything.
Wouldn't it be better to get rid of at least one of the interfaces, and
provide a way to check what mode the bpf descriptor is in, either way?
--
Brian Fundakowski Feldman \'[ FreeBSD ]''''''''''\
<> green at FreeBSD.org \ The Power to Serve! \
Opinions expressed are my own. \,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,\
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