Drew, thanks very much for the prompt response (which I'm including in its entirety so that networking-discuss and driver-discuss can participate in the same thread), and to esp highlight your comment:
> Please make GLDv3 available to 3rd parties sooner > rather than later. I'm trying to come up with a prototype for the Brussels Project that will enhance the "dladm set-linkprop" feature to allow setting of properties. At least for the prototype phase, we'll be targetting GLDv3 drivers only, though, when Clearview's softmac shim becomes available, non-gldv3 drivers should be covered as well. The idea is to have dladm provide "Stable" support for setting "public" properties (common to most drivers) and, at the same time, provide the infrastructure for supporting custom properties. So, if you were to make a wish-list of properties that you would like to see supported (either as public or as custom) in the first prototype, what would they be? --Sowmini On (03/02/07 10:50), Andrew Gallatin wrote: > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > From: Andrew Gallatin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2007 10:50:09 -0500 (EST) > Subject: Re: [driver-discuss] Fwd: NIC administration desirables.. > In-reply-to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 (patch 12) "Channel Islands" XEmacs Lucid > X-PMX-Version: 5.2.0.264296 > Original-recipient: rfc822;[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > > - Please provide a short (1-2 line) overview of your networking > environment. > > I'm a driver writer working for an IHV. I currently maintain a GLDv2 > Solaris 10GbE driver, and some older GLDv2 and DLPI 2Gb and 4Gb > ethernet drivers. > > > > - do you frequently change or upgrade your network interface cards? Do > > > you otherwise modify existing NIC configuration and/or tweak the > tunables? > > > If yes, how frequently do you do these tasks? > > Daily. > > > > - What tools/commands do you use to administer NICs? > > > Are you currently satisfied with the existing tools? > > Ndd and driver.conf. > > > > - What do you like/dislike about existing methods? Please be as > > > specific as possible. > > I love the ability to permanently set variables in driver.conf files > in plain text. Beleive it or not, some OSes don't have this feature. > Reading variables from a .conf file in a driver is easy and > straighforward. > > I personally cannot stand NDD. The interface a driver uses to > interact with ndd is incredibly cryptic, and I can barely wrap my head > around it. > > Kstat is decent. > > It would be great if these 3 could be unified in a flexible manner. > > One of the things I don't like about the linux "ethtool" is the > inability to set "custom" parameters. Eg, it will let you set > only parameters which are common among many drivers. If you've got > something specific to your driver (mydriver.fluxcapacitor) you > cannot change it. > > Since I can't use gldv3, I don't know much about dladm. I certainly > hope it is extensible and will allow seting driver-specific things. > > > > - What are the typical NIC tunables/properties that you examine most of > > > the time? Please indicate whether you merely 'get' (i.e., read-only > > > info) existing values for the property, or tune it (i.e., read/write). > > Driver specific things mostly. Sometimes MTU and interrupt coalescing. > > > > - Do you have custom scripts executed at boot time that set ndd > parameters? > > No. > > > > - Do you write custom device drivers? If yes, do you use the GLDv3 > framework? > > I would love to use GLDv3, especially since some critical performance > features like LSO/TSO are (seemingly artficially and unnecessarily) > tied to GLDv3. Please make GLDv3 available to 3rd parties sooner > rather than later. > > It is great that you guys are soliciting opinions! > > Drew > _______________________________________________ driver-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/driver-discuss
