Re: misc/39327

[Jukka Ruohonen <jruohonen%iki.fi@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR misc/39327; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Jukka Ruohonen <jruohonen%iki.fi@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: misc/39327
Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 20:04:48 +0300

 5AOn Fri, May 22, 2009 at 11:09:07AM -0400, Martin S. Weber wrote:
 > Well, it's true that it shouldn't be "the DARPA internet" anylonger, but
 > what about the other part of the fix suggestion, i.e. document in 
 > /etc/procotols which domain (by socket(2) parlese) the protocol is for?
 
 I am not sure whether I follow you with the other part.
 
 1. I think it is not so easy nor reasonable for a single operating system to
 change '/etc/protocols' because it comes from IANA, a.k.a. the Internet
 Assigned Numbers Authority. Functions like getprotobyname(3) also use
 '/etc/protocols' as a lookup; changing it will break a lot of things.
 
 2. Generally the file is not meant as a reference for the domain-parameter
 in socket(2), but rather as a reference for the number in the protocol-field
 of IPv4 header (or next header -field in IPv6), as described also in the
 file itsef. Even if such change would be made, there is no mapping between
 the AF_-constants and the file (surely e.g. TCP can be used both with
 AF_INET and AF_INET6).
 
 3. Moreover, I think the socket(2) manual page does not rightly give any
 impression that one should look to '/etc/protocols' for the AF_-constants.
 
 - Jukka.