Re: wiconfig(8) and non-wi(4) 802.11 drivers

[Roy Marples <roy%marples.name@localhost>]

On Fri, 2008-08-29 at 11:23 +0200, Alan Barrett wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, der Mouse wrote:
> > Surely we should be moving things _out of_, not _into_ ifconfig?  It
> > already has way too many special cases that belong in per-device config
> > programs (eg, the vlan and vlanif keywords, which exist solely for
> > vlan(4) and which really belong in a vlanconfig of some sort).
> 
> I believe that the current thinking is along the lines of "If it has
> anything to do with configuring a network interface, then ifconfig
> should do it".  So ifconfig can tell a vlan what physical interface to
> use, can tell various tunnel interfaces what outer addresses and/or
> ports to use, can tell various radio interfaces what channels and/or
> ssids to use, etc.
> 
> I rather like being able to use "ifconfig ${ifname} ssid ${ssid}"
> regardless of whether my radio interface is wi, wpi, ipw, iwi, etc.

One of the main attraction of BSD is that ifconfig does everything -
it's all in the man page nicely documention.

On Linux you have to play "guess the tool" to get the right man page.
Even then, you are lost as the new bridging configuration is done by
toggling stuff in /sys (sysfs) which has no man page so eventually
you'll just have kernel documentation.

However, the ifconfig tool should be modular enough to add and remove
stuff from it.

Thanks

Roy