Re: Interface description support

[Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>]

On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 04:59:04AM -0700, Jason Thorpe wrote:
> 
> > On Jun 24, 2019, at 4:29 AM, Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost> wrote:
> > 
> > I'd say that we should explicitely mention if we're looking up a name or
> > a description, to avoid confusion. For example if wm0 has descrition
> > "external if" we should be able to write in ipf:
> > 
> > block in on wm0 from any to any
> > or
> > block in on intf_desc "external if" from any to any
> > 
> > Same with netstat:
> > netstat -I wm0
> > netstat -D "external if"
> > 
> > and so on ...
> 
> I think that severely limits the utility of the description field.

I'm not sure why.
AFAIK this is already a different ioctl to retrieve the description, so
the tools will have to be changed anyway.

Alternatively we could make things like if_nametoindex(3) match on description
as well as interface name, but this opens a whole can of worms:
if_indextoname(3) will not return the same string, and what should we
do with if_nameindex(3) ?

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--