Peter Memishian writes: > ... and in general the interface stability of the manpage is listed as > "committed". Given that DHCP has never worked with IPMP, we are free to > define new semantics for IPMP, but I think changing this generally makes > sense and would prefer not to introduce more IPMP-specific logic than > necessary. However, strictly speaking, a general change would break > compatibility (though it's not clear to me anyone would have been relying > on the old behavior).
Other than forking and execing ifconfig, which I think most application writers would think is "messy," we don't have a good, defined way for an application to turn off DHCP on an interface -- other than messing with the flags. So, it's not completely inconceivable that someone, somewhere might have relied on ~IFF_UP meaning "turn off DHCP now." There's some risk, but I suspect it's pretty low, particularly for a Minor release. (Why do people need to turn off DHCP from within an application anyway? And if they do, why don't they need to turn it back on?) If you change the way DHCP treats ~IFF_UP, then what are the specific semantics? Is it possible for DHCP to use DLPI while the interface is down to establish a new address and turn IFF_UP back on, or are we "stuck" in that state until the address ages away? (My guess is that it's the latter.) A somewhat more concerning issue is the fragile way that DHCP operates: if you breathe on it, it falls over. The user can't do tiny things such as fixing a weird netmask or an incorrect broadcast address without having DHCP run away, and at least to me, that's something that makes it *REALLY* hard to administer and deal with in 'real life,' where configurations are far from completely perfect, and where administrators don't expect the system to fight against them. As an "outsider," I would have expected that if I tweak anything on the interface, even the address, DHCP still keeps doing its thing. It maintains the lease that I originally got (not necessarily whatever address is on the interface now), and if anything changes in a DHCPACK (if the server provides changed parameters) then those changes get applied and wipe out whatever tweaks I made. "Abandon" isn't what I was expecting. I guess I'm saying I'd be supportive of going _further_ than just IFF_UP, but if that's the only change you want, then I'd support that. -- 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
