Subject: Re: proposed changes to system config files
To: Berndt Josef Wulf <wulf@dingo.ping.net.au>
From: Klaus Klein <kleink@reziprozitaet.de>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 10/28/2001 14:53:55
Berndt Josef Wulf <wulf@dingo.ping.net.au> writes:

> Klaus Klein wrote
> > Berndt Josef Wulf <wulf@dingo.ping.net.au> writes:
> > 
> > [ This is looking very similar to misc/12814... ]
> > 
> > > ----------------- /etc/defaults/rc.conf ----------------------
> > > # Set this to the hostname or the IP address of the router that will
> > > # route IPv6 packets.
> > > # If blank, use /etc/mygate6
> > > #
> > > defaultroute6=""
> > > ----------------- /etc/defaults/rc.conf ----------------------
> > 
> > One thing that strikes me is that it doesn't scale terribly well,
> > i.e. what's going to be done for the next additional address family to
> > be supported?
> > 
> > Furthermore, ifconfig.if(5) provides an example of routing information
> > being modified using shell evaluation, so why add an alternative
> > interface to that interface?  (Note I'm not arguing about possibly
> > deprecating the existing defaultroute/mygate at this point...)
> 
> PR12814 is indeed similar to the offered proposal at hand and to me it
> signifies that we owe to do something here, however, I was unaware
> about this PR prior to my submission.
> 
> Can you expand on the argument of scalability and the additional
> address family a little more? I'm afraid you lost me here.

I'm probably picking a particularly silly example of an address famliy
here, but do you suppose we should duplicate the whole processing
again the day IPv8 comes out to interpret /etc/mygate8 and
$defaultroute8?

> The proposed changes have no impact on the current situation other
> than providing a means of configuring IPv6 capable systems using a
> procedure similar to that currently used for IPv4.

For `simple' (i.e. host) setups, the default route is supposedly
picked up from Router Advertisements.  For router setups, the need to
manually configure non-link-local interface addresses, set up Router
Advertisement, etc., makes the `simplification' provided by such a
mechanism seem fairly negligible.  Actually I believe it's making the
issue more complicated: you have to edit one additional configuration
file besides ifconfig.if and rtadvd.conf, which is either
/etc/mygate6 or /etc/rc.conf.


- Klaus