HEAD UP: non-MPSAFE network drivers to be disabled

[Julian Elischer]

Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> In message <483BBC1B.6040905 at elischer.org>, Julian Elischer writes:
> 
>> However the line discipline was a very convenient place for netgraph 
>> to hook in without leaving the kernel. If you can supply an equally
>> effective way to hook into a serial device in such a way that it 
>> appears to be a source/sink of bits then I don't care about
>> line disciplins, but until you have a suggested replacement then leave 
>> them alone. There are MANY people using mpd with the netgraph ppp 
>> moduel hooked directly to the serial port via the netgraph line 
>> discipline.
> 
> What exact value of "MANY" are we talking about here, and do you
> have any evidence that the systems in question will be updated
> to FreeBSD-8.0-RELEASE or later ?

judging by the bug reports when things get broken there are still a
lot of people connected to the internet via dial up lines in places
off the beaten track, and still a lot of people who when travelling
do use dialup still. Some of these also use mpd. I can not say how 
many plan to keep using this in the future but it may be that the 
simplest answer is a completely separate sio driver that
just has netgraph hooks. I haven't talked with Ed yet but there
may be may ways to solve this problem.

One that comes to mind is tha tthe way netgraph hooks to other modules
assumes a possible queueing of data, and that decoupling could
make it a lot easier to connect tehm that was required for slip and
ppp.


> 
> If, contrary to my expectation, that you can show a real market
> here, then we should make a better interface than linedisc for
> such hooks into serial ports.
>