Subject: Re: bonding and ifenslave version.

From: Nicolas de Pesloüan<[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2011 07:31:38 +0200

Le 03/08/2011 23:33, Stephen Hemminger a écrit :
> On Wed, 03 Aug 2011 22:38:03 +0200
> Nicolas de Pesloüan<[email-masked]>  wrote:
<snip>
>> At least, we can:
>> - update the bonding documentation to clarify that ifenslave is deprecated (and move most ifenslave
>> related stuffs at the end of the documentation);
>> - possibly issue a warning when the API is used, suggesting to use sysfs instead.
>>
>> I can take care of the documentation update if appropriate.
>>
>> 	Nicolas.
>
> Or I could just put a shell script that does the same thing in iproute.

You mean, to replace ifenslave (from ifenslave.c) by a shell script by the same name that gives 
users the same command-line interface but use sysfs instead of the ioctl API internally?

I had this in mind two years ago, in a private conversation while changing the ifenslave package on 
Debian.

But chance exist that those who expect ifenslave to work would like to disable sysfs support if not 
used. I assume that totally disabling sysfs at compile time would reduce the size of the kernel far 
more that disabling the ioctl API. So, for those doing embedded things, this may makes sens to have 
an ifenslave version that doesn't rely on sysfs.

Or do you mean, to replace ifenslave (.c) by a shell script that use netlink internally? Are all the 
bonding options available through netlink? I remember many conversation about using netlink for 
bonding setup, but don't remember seeing that in the actual code.

	Nicolas.