On Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:52:59 -0700 (PDT) David Miller <davem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > From: Bill Nottingham <notting@xxxxxxxxxx> > Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 17:34:20 -0400 > > > I could look at wireless network configuration, but I doubt that's going to > > help your argument. > > Just like any system with age, we have a lot of legacy to > convert over. But it will happen. > > > That being said, how is moving from adding a bonding slave from: > > echo "+eth0" > /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves to: > > to: > > http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Net:Generic_Netlink_HOWTO > > > > a worthwhile improvement for the admin? Let's see, a kernel-userspace > > protocol with magic message formats. Hey, we reinvented ioctl! > > > > Why, if netlink is the standard (and it's been around for a long > > damn time), was sysfs configuration for bonding added in 2005? Why > > was bridge configuration added in 2005, and *extended* in 2006 and > > 2007? Why were the user-space tools such as brctl ported from ioctl > > to sysfs? > > Because often a lot of shit slips in when someone who understands > the ramifications is too busy or on vacation. > > We do want everything to be netlink based. > > Why? > > Because it means that you can run one monitoring tool to listen > for netlink events and report them to the user for diagnosis. > > It means that network configuration events can be sent over > the wire and used remotely at some point. > > The latter can never happen as long as we keep adding ad-hoc > config stuff. There are always historical reasons. In this case it was because I knew more about sysfs than netlink, and there was no netlink interface for managing interfaces back in 2005. Sysfs is okay for simple stuff (set forward-delay to 10seconds), but it falls down when anything interesting and transactional happens. Think of sysfs as more an extension of per-device sysctl's or module parameters, rather than a good configuration interface. _______________________________________________ Bridge mailing list Bridge@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.linux-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bridge
