On Tue, 2007-10-09 at 06:54 +0100, David Edmondson wrote:
> The existing tools (xm/xend, virsh) and their associated APIs do not
> require a netmask to be specified alongside the IP address of a
> network interface.
>
> So, if Solaris requires that a netmask is specified it will be
> different to the other common guest domain implementation.
Maybe I'm confused about the case boundary. Are we talking about host
behavior, solaris guest behavior, or both?
I'd want to apply the Postel principle here (be conservative in what you
send and liberal in what you accept).
When we're the host we should always pass both address and netmask so
that the guest doesn't have to guess.
When we're the guest we may have to guess but we should be clear to the
admin that we're guessing because the host screwed up in not including a
netmask with the ip address. It's an administrative error, but we
recover from the error by guessing a netmask and stumbling onward rather
than halting or failing to configure the interface.
If it turns out that we need compatibility at the admin interface, the
way to go would be to have the host guess the netmask (based on the
greater amount of information available to it) rather than having the
guest do it.
- Bill
