ipv6_enable

[Doug Barton]

[ snipped ]

On 04/05/10 08:52, Bjoern A. Zeeb wrote:
>
> I have no idea (unless I'll read them) about the guts of various shell
> function magic we use to configure interfaces, and I heck do not care
> about where it's called autoblah_foo or zigbangbusheek as none of our
> users does, so I'll ignore that.  I'll probably have to comment on a
> few rc.conf knobs as that's all a user cares about.

Agreed. I've tried to make the point repeatedly that the users should
not have to learn about the internals to do simple enabling of the
interface.

> Neither IPv4 nor IPX have an <AF>_enable="" knob in defaults/rc.conf
> and I cannot see why we would need it for IPv6.  You don't configure
> it on an interface you don't have it configured an interface.
> The fact that it had been there for IPv6 is historic and could have
> been a good or bad idea at that time during the early days of
> development.  I am actully too lazy to see why it had really been added.

See my answer to Hiroki. Since there was no clear consensus to keep
ipv6_enable I agree to allow it to stay deprecated.

> I wouldn't want to have a link-local address on my non-loopback
> interfaces working unless I asked for them.  That's why we had
> ipv6_autolinklocal in the past and that's why the current rc/devd/iface
> framework prevents this from happening unless explicitly asked for.
> That's why there is nd6 options=<IFDISABLED>.

I agree that this is a feature, and I've maintained it in the changes I
just committed.

> I am trying to think of a reason I had needed ipv6_interfaces in the
> past and I can find some.  I have checked my current configurations
> and I couldn't find any instance of *interfaces anymore.  Being able
> to use ifconfig_<IF>**, especially with the IPv6 per interface options,
> seems to have fixed all for me with the current implementation.

It's probably worth pointing out that this is because of the defaults in
/etc/defaults/rc.conf.

> Why do we need ipv6_prefer?  Well, actually we do not need it. We
> could have people use ip6addrctl and a static config file with their
> preference. 

Here I disagree. Having a nice knob in rc.conf makes this an easy thing
for users to configure, and is consistent with your point of view above
that users should not have to learn about the internals to do simple
configuration.

> So what do you people actually want to change?  You want auto-magic to
> happen (again) that suits your local setup or that does what we used
> to have in the 5.x days?  Well put your "local" needs into
> ifconfig_<IF>_ipv6 and be done.

For the record, I resent your implication that my motivations are
personal. I wasn't even using the stock interface until recently, and I
am more than capable of writing all the custom configuration scripts I
need.

My motivation is simply to keep things simple for our users, and avoid
what I consider to be a POLA violation. However, given the lack of
consensus around keeping the ipv6_enable option I'll accept the
community's decision and move on.


Doug

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