Re: [B.A.T.M.A.N.] batman-adv and/or batmand porting effort to FreeBSD

[elektra]

Hi Mokhi -
  
batmand implements IP-based routing with an older version of the B.A.T.M.A.N. 
protocol. Development is stalled. It currently lacks originator message 
aggregation and IPv6 support. I might add some improvements and features one 
day, but don't bet your money on it.

However, it is a simple, lightweight and fully working mesh routing daemon that 
has been used mainly by Villagetelco and community networks. It can be used in 
high range, low bandwidth networks such as meshes between maritime sensors or 
short wave packet radio. For this, small packet size is required and using IPv6 
addresses is unnecessary overhead.
  
Today most community networks that mainly deal with Internet traffic have 
replaced it with batman-adv, though. It offers more features and is under 
active development.

batman-adv is a different approach, as it doesn't implement IP-based routing 
but a virtual layer 2 switch via the mesh. batman-adv offers interesting and 
exciting capabilities, thanks to the different approach. However, the technical 
implementation is way more difficult and porting it to a different OS is 
probably a lot of work, as Simon has pointed out.
  
A IP-based fork of batmand is bmx6/7, which is actively developed, has IPv6 
support, originator message aggregation support and many other bells and 
whistles.
  
There might be a *BSD port already, but I don't know. Porting bmx* should be 
relatively easy, as it is a IP routing daemon.
  
Cheers,
Elektra


On Tue, 13 Feb 2018 18:52:51 +0330
Mahdi Mokhtari  wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> After some time of playing with the B.A.T.M.A.N protocol and
> net-interface on OpenWRT and Debian I was thinking to use it with
> the servers I use everyday (and maybe on routers/appliances I have
> nanoBSD on).
> 
> So I started an effort...
> (As a background) I already ported some applications to FreeBSD [and I'm
> maintaining them] and
> also I did work already on the Linux emulation layer of FreeBSD (FreeBSD
> has a Linux syscall-emulation and Linux-KPI layers).
> So my approach (as naturally I didn't expect the build of batman-adv.ko
> to be successful as is),
> was based on the approach that we [at FreeBSD] did to port Linux's
> drm... 
> I ended up in adding some header-files to FreeBSD Linux-KPI (like
> average.h, percpu.h, ...).
> Now I'm at a state that Netlink blocks me and I'm to determine next step :-)
> [Which I don't assume it being trivial with my current approach]
> 
> So I'd like to ask:
> 1- Is it better approach to "rewrite" batman-adv.ko [at least
> Netlink-ish (let's call "Linuxism") parts] than what I'm doing now?
> 2- Any other efforts are being done out there?
> 3- is batmand deprecated [So I should mainly focus on batman-adv.ko]?
> 4- any other comments do you have? :D
> 
> P.S. sorry if I'm not really good at starting conversation from scratch
> and out-of-nowhere :D
> but I hope by continuing the collaboration we can have better (more
> enriched) FreeBSD and better (as in more portable) B.A.T.M.A.N :-)
> 
> 
> -- 
> Best regards, MMokhi.
> 


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Re: [B.A.T.M.A.N.] batman-adv and/or batmand porting effort to FreeBSD

[Simon Wunderlich]

Hi Mokhi,

On Tuesday, February 13, 2018 6:52:51 PM CET Mahdi Mokhtari wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> After some time of playing with the B.A.T.M.A.N protocol and
> net-interface on OpenWRT and Debian I was thinking to use it with
> the servers I use everyday (and maybe on routers/appliances I have
> nanoBSD on).
> 
> So I started an effort...
> (As a background) I already ported some applications to FreeBSD [and I'm
> maintaining them] and
> also I did work already on the Linux emulation layer of FreeBSD (FreeBSD
> has a Linux syscall-emulation and Linux-KPI layers).
> So my approach (as naturally I didn't expect the build of batman-adv.ko
> to be successful as is),
> was based on the approach that we [at FreeBSD] did to port Linux's
> drm... 
> I ended up in adding some header-files to FreeBSD Linux-KPI (like
> average.h, percpu.h, ...).
> Now I'm at a state that Netlink blocks me and I'm to determine next step :-)
> [Which I don't assume it being trivial with my current approach]

That sounds interesting ... will you be able to follow up the port with our 
development, or what is your plan on that? I'd assume that you need to rewrite 
a rather large chunk of "Linuxism" as you say, and I would assume that porting 
newer versions as we release would be quite some manual work.

> 
> So I'd like to ask:
> 1- Is it better approach to "rewrite" batman-adv.ko [at least
> Netlink-ish (let's call "Linuxism") parts] than what I'm doing now?

I don't have enough knowledge of FreeBSD to answer that. I would assume that 
the skb handling and netlink/debugfs parts are Linux specific. You'd at least 
need to rewrite those. You better don't touch the routing code, I would not 
advise rewriting that.

> 2- Any other efforts are being done out there?

I'm not aware. At least nothing serious (I remember someone demanding batman-
adv to work in web browsers). :D

> 3- is batmand deprecated [So I should mainly focus on batman-adv.ko]?

We agreed to not call it deprecated, but there hasn't been any developments in 
the past 7 years except for some build-specific issues. I'd suggest to focus on 
batman-adv.ko. batmand may be easier to port though, but I see more people 
using batman-adv today.

> 4- any other comments do you have? :D

Good luck! :D

And please keep us posted!

> 
> P.S. sorry if I'm not really good at starting conversation from scratch
> and out-of-nowhere :D
> but I hope by continuing the collaboration we can have better (more
> enriched) FreeBSD and better (as in more portable) B.A.T.M.A.N :-)

Looking forward to it!

Cheers,
 Simon


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