I talked to Sowmini about this on the phone last week, so I should share
my thoughts with the list.
Suppose the admin has setup a property for bge0 using ipadm set-prop,
and then bge0 disappears (due to DR or due a poweroff, unplugging the
card, and power on). My understanding is that the property is
persistent, hence it will remain in the system and will be applied
should bge0 reappear.
But what does it look like to the admin while bge0 is missing?
I think it makes sense for the property to appear in ipadm show-prop
(perhaps with some annotation such as "bge0*" instead of "bge0" to
indicate that it refers to a missing IP interface.)
Note that the "missing" aspect is orthogonal to "persistent across
reboots vs. temporary" since with DR we could even have "temporary"
properties (should we decided we need to support such beasts) end up
referring to missing IP interfaces.
Given that the property is maintained by the system and can be shown, it
would also make sense for the admin to at least be able to destroy it
(in case the admin really doesn't want it to be applied when bge0 is
plugged back in.) and probably also be able to change it.
And for consistency reasons, since the system can have properties for
interfaces that have disappeared, it probably makes sense to optionally
allow the creation of properties for interfaces that does not (yet)
exist, but relying on a force flag to avoid a typo in the name of the IP
interface being interpreted as a reference to a non-existing interface.
For example:
# ipadm set-prop -p mtu=1400 -m ip bge1
dladm: interface "bge1" does not exist; use -F to set property
for non-existent interfaces
# ipadm set-prop -F -p mtu=1400 -m ip bge1
If that general approach is sensible for ipadm properties, it probably
also makes sense for IP address management, and it might make sense to
apply it to dladm as well.
Erik
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