Re: Issues with Netatalk and MACE

[David Riley <fraveydank%gmail.com@localhost>]

I do agree in principle that we probably shouldn't even be going out over the 
network interface for any of this; the problem is that that's not what the code 
is actually doing, and since I haven't heard any hue and cry over this 
anywhere, I'm willing to assume that this is somewhat unusual (or perhaps 
running actual Appletalk is unusual, which I'm willing to concede).

I haven't traced out how the IP stack handles things like this (if I try to do 
a DNS lookup from my own box, it works just fine), but I'm willing to bet that 
it does what it should and just bypasses the interfaces entirely (for example, 
if I ping myself, I can't observe anything on tcpdump even internally).

I suppose if this is something that actually need fixing and not in fact 
something stupid I'm doing wrong, I should probably submit a patch for all 5 
people who still use Appletalk. :-)


- Dave


On Jul 9, 2010, at 5:43 PM, Dennis Ferguson wrote:

> 
> 
> While NBP might be complicated, AARP is just ARP for Appletalk and is
> exceedingly simple.  The only useful function that ARPing for your
> own address could have is the side effect of telling others that you
> are using that address.  If it isn't doing that, and is really, truly
> trying to discover its own MAC address by sending packets, then it is
> broken and you need to figure out why it isn't recognizing its own
> address, and is instead sending AARP packets for it, in the first place.
> 
> I think the box inherently needs to be able to recognize its own addresses
> to function, which means it shouldn't be sending packets to itself out of
> a wire let alone arping for its own MAC address.  What does the routing
> table entry for the local address look like?
> 
> Dennis Ferguson
>