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Re: Simplify bridge(4)



On Fri 12 Feb 2016 at 17:19:59 -0500, Mouse wrote:
> Indeed,
> I would say that bridge should not, conceptually, be a network
> interface at all; I suspect it was done as a network interface simply
> because that got a lot of infrastructure for free - and, if it works to
> put an address on the bridge interface itself, because that part of it
> _should_ be a network interface.

Linux takes it even further. If you add an interface to a bridge, the
interface can't be an IP endpoint any more. You have to use the bridge
for that instead.

That is extremely inconvenient for running VMs. The usual trick for VMs
is to create a tap for it and bridge it to some real interface, for as
long as the VM exists, and remove them both. But on Linux, your whole IP
traffic now stops and you have to overhaul all your configuration. Which
is something you don't want to do so often, so you have to basically
make it the permanent configurtation, for the eventuality of wanting to
run a VM.

Please don't do it that way on NetBSD. It is stupid[1].

[1] I have a laptop set up that way, and some of the important userland
tools get confused by it. That makes it even worse.

-Olaf.
-- 
___ Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert  -- The Doctor: No, 'eureka' is Greek for
\X/ rhialto/at/xs4all.nl    -- 'this bath is too hot.'

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