Re: Userspace PPP a la FreeBSD?
On Tue, Apr 18, 2000 at 11:56:18PM +0100, Adam Sampson wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 18, 2000 at 12:13:30AM +0100, Chris Lingard wrote:
> > PS
> > Please send pppd
>
> On an alternate tack for getting Hurd a PPP implementation, how about
> implementing a workalike of FreeBSD's "tun" driver and nicking their
> userspace ppp daemon? From the tun(4) manpage:
>
[...snip...]
> It looks like this would be a much easier job to implement than PPP as a
> Hurd server.
>
I think that would be a very good idea. I actually looked at pppd to see how
much work would have to be done in order to port it to Hurd. The pppd itself
is pretty platform independent with the exception of functions that deal with
the serial port, changing network routes and the like. Also all platform
dependent functions are bundled together separate from the main code.
Two things stopped me from exploring this further: the lack of a development
Hurd machine and my blatant ignorance regarding network interfaces. For
example I'd have no idea what kind of functionality a "tun" driver might
implement.
However I do have an idea of what should be done. pfinet must be extended to
handle multiple interfaces at the same time, and of different types. And
pfinet must support changing the routing information at runtime. I think there
was a patch for that floating around, but I didn't look into it much. And then
the "tun" driver might be implemented. Also having such a generic network
interface will enable us to support protocols other then PPP, implemented
outside pfinet and it may even be possible to bring the Ethernet interface
support out of pfinet as well.
Igor
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