if_flags usage etc.

[Brooks Davis]

On Wed, Jan 25, 2006 at 09:15:17AM +0100, Andre Oppermann wrote:
> Milan Obuch wrote:
> >On Wednesday 25 January 2006 08:56, Andre Oppermann wrote:
> >
> >>sthaug at nethelp.no wrote:
> >>
> >>>>We should probably better document the interface "interface". if we are
> >>>>going to (as Sam suggests)
> >>>>do some cleanups we might as well consider what other changes should be
> >>>>put in at the same time.
> >>>
> >...
> >
> >>>- One feature sorely missed (which I use a lot in my daily work with
> >>>hardware based routers) is the ability to associate a "description"
> >>>field with each interface.  Note that this should be available both
> >>>for physical interfaces (Ethernet etc.) and for logical interfaces
> >>>(e.g. vlan).
> >>
> >>Struct ifnet is the same for all kinds of interfaces, so any change
> >>would make it available for everyone.  And yes, this looks like a useful
> >>addition.
> >
> >See archives - mailing list freebsd-net, Nov 25. 2005, subject ifconfig 
> >description.
> 
> Interesting.  Ideally it would not use a static sized buffer for the 
> description
> but a pointer in struct ifnet to a malloc()ed block of memory.  This would 
> allow
> for arbitrary sized descriptions.  Haven't looked at the difficulties 
> implementing
> the this for the userland/kernel crossing though.

See my post to -net a week or two ago suggesting deprecating the
ifr_data member in favor of a pointer and a length.  I proposed it
specificaly to support this feature in a non-broken way.

-- Brooks

-- 
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