sysinst ne0 issue (Was: Panics going multiuser with NetBSD 8, 9, current)

[David Brownlee <abs%absd.org@localhost>]

On Sat, 11 Sept 2021 at 16:21, John Klos <john%ziaspace.com@localhost> wrote:
>
> > 2. I couldn't configure my network during installation. I have an X-Surf
> > board, which is supported by the ne(4) driver and appeared as ne0.
> > When the installer asked for adding media or link-layer arguments I just hit
> > enter for "none" and the following error appeared:
> > SIOCGIFMEDIA: inappropriate iotctl for device
> > After that I escaped into the shell and could set up my network by
> > ifconfig(8) without problems.
>
> I think all cards that don't offer physical media options give that
> message because the configuration tries to set media to autoconfig. Not
> sure if it's better to ignore it or if some logic should be added to not
> set media type in these cases.

It definitely feels like a bug - for an interface supporting
autoselect such as wm0 running
 "ifconfig ${if} none"
explicitly locks autoselect off and effectively downs the interface

So sysinst needs to be taught how to handle such interfaces. I don't
have a machine with ne0 to hand, but could someone with one confirm
whether this:
- Actually downs the interface (On a running system run 'ifconfig ne0
none' and see if the network stops)
- If the above doesn't stop the network, run sysinst and try to
configure the network and see if it works
I think it should be fixed whetever the case, but its nice to add
additional information to the PR for future historians :-p

David