On Mon, Oct 9, 2023, at 18:49, Rodolfo Zitellini wrote: >> From: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx> >> >> The last localtalk driver is gone now, and ppp support was never fully >> merged, so clean up the appletalk code by removing the obvious dead >> code paths. >> >> Notably, this removes one of the two callers of the old .ndo_do_ioctl() >> callback that was abused for getting device addresses and is now >> only used in the ieee802154 subsystem, which still uses the same trick. >> >> The include/uapi/linux/if_ltalk.h header might still be required >> for building userspace programs, but I made sure that debian code >> search and the netatalk upstream have no references it it, so it >> should be fine to remove. >> >> Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx> > > Hi! > I’ve been working on a new LocalTalk interface driver for the last > couple months, do you think it would be possible to at least postpone > the removal of LT a bit? > > It is a driver for an open source device called TashTalk > (https://github.com/lampmerchant/tashtalk), which runs on a PIC micro > that does all the LT interfacing, and communicates back via serial to > the host system. My driver is relatively simple and works very well > with netatalk 2.2 (which is still maintained and still has support for > AppleTalk). The driver is basically complete and trsted and I was > preparing to submit a patch. > > Still having LocalTalk in my view has many advantages for us > enthusiasts that still want to bridge old machines to the current world > without modifications, for example for printing on modern printers, > netbooting, sharing files and even tcp/ip. All this basically works out > of the box via the driver, Linux and available userspace tools > (netatalk, macipgw). > > The old ISA cards supported by COPS were basically unobtanium even 20 > years ago, but the solution of using a PIC and a serial port is very > robust and much more furure-proof. We also already have a device that > can interface a modern machine directly via USB to LocalTalk. > > The development of the TashTalk has been also extensively discussed on > thr 68KMLA forum > (https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/modtashtalk-lt0-driver-for-linux.45031/) > > I hope the decision to remove LocalTalk can be reconsidered at least > for the time being so there is a chance to submit a new, modern device > making use of this stack. Nothing is decided, I'm just proposing my patch as a cleanup for now. It would be nice to still drop the ndo_do_ioctl function though, at least in some form. When your driver actually makes it into the kernel, you can find a different method of communicating the address between the socket interface and the device driver. I can see a few ways this could work out: - add a custom callback pointer to struct atalk_iface to get and set the address for phase1 probing instead of going through the ioctl - rewrite the probing logic in aarp.c more widely, and improve the userspace interface in the process by introducing a netlink interface - Move your entire driver into userspace and go to the kernel using tun/tap. This has the added benefit of avoiding a lot of the complexity of the tty line discipline code you have. Arnd
