Re: Interface naming in linprocfs
Package: kfreebsd-10
Severity: normal
I'm opening a bug to keep track of this. Please followup there (and
please use the BTS next time).
2011/10/8 Mats Erik Andersson <mats.andersson@gisladisker.se>:
> Dear all,
>
> for some time now I have been somewhat annoyed by the Linux kind
> of network adapter names put to display in "/proc/net/dev".
>
> Imagine now that we would revert the file to be displaying
> the BSD kernel names instead. What negative effects or failures
> are we to expect from such a change?
>
> At present "ifconfig", "netstat", and "route" use the BSD names.
> A priori I know of no utility the depends on Linux naming.
>
> Should one influence the corresponding functionality in
>
> sys/compat/linprocfs/linprocfs.c
>
> to compile into either convention, based on a macro?
We can't make this a static decision because it depends on the
runtime. If the runtime are Linux binaries (as is usually the case
when using linprocfs with FreeBSD), linprocfs should print Linux
names. If the runtime are GNU/kFreeBSD (or FreeBSD) binaries,
linprocfs should print BSD names.
What you propose would break chroots setups where people run
GNU/kFreeBSD in a chroot on FreeBSD, or vice-versa.
Fortunately, the runtime can be detected, since Linux binaries run in
a special compatibility mode. This should be worked with upstream.
In general you should be careful before changing kernel ABI. Diverging
from upstream kernel ABI has many detrimental consequences.
Btw, we have the same problem with /proc/mounts (see
debian/patches/908_linprocfs_is_not_proc.diff).
--
Robert Millan
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