I've been looking through the various discussions in NWAM and Clearview related to storing parameters in SMF, and there's one bit of detail that I haven't seen discussed yet.
The current dladm user interface has a "-R" option for most of the subcommands that set and show parameters (though, oddly, not all). This option relies on the fact that, since dladm itself defines the private file formats, it can treat them as roughly "Committed Private" -- meaning that they don't change incompatibly in format between versions, and reading and writing an alternate root is "safe." This isn't true for SMF. There's no "-R" for svccfg, and you have to be running the same patch level of Solaris to read or write the repository. There's no guarantee of stability of the database, other than that the system will somehow upgrade itself -- presumably doing a conversion after reboot. So, how will that "-R" feature (intended for jumpstart and upgrade scenarios, I'd assume) be accomodated in this new world? The reason I ask is that I'm looking into how bridging should fit into this configuration scheme, and I'm torn between the better functionality of the plain text files currently used by dladm and the SMF-based design it looks like Clearview and NWAM are headed towards. Should I assume that the previously committed "-R" feature is going away? -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <james.d.carlson at sun.com> Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
