netdev - Re: bonding and ifenslave version.

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Message-ID: <4E39B1AB.7050502@gmail.com>
Date:	Wed, 03 Aug 2011 22:38:03 +0200
From:	Nicolas de Pesloüan 
	<nicolas.2p.debian@...il.com>
To:	Jay Vosburgh <fubar@...ibm.com>
CC:	Andy Gospodarek <andy@...yhouse.net>, netdev@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: bonding and ifenslave version.

Le 03/08/2011 22:07, Jay Vosburgh a écrit :
> Nicolas de Pesloüan<nicolas.2p.debian@...il.com>  wrote:
>> Le 03/08/2011 21:03, Andy Gospodarek a écrit :

>>> Distributions benefit from version numbers on userspace utils.  It
>>> would probably be better to keep ifenslave's version number as it is
>>> to help those maintaining those distro packages.
>>
>> As one of the maintainers for the ifenslave package on Debian, I perfectly
>> understand the need for an upstream version, but as such, I expected the
>> upstream version number to change when the file change... Version numbers
>> in Debian use upstream version numbers when available and add a subversion
>> number for Debian specific changes. I would expect to change the version
>> number and not only the Debian subversion when the only change is a new
>> upstream version.
>
> 	One thing to remember here is that currently very few (perhaps
> no) distros use the ifenslave.c that comes with mainline.  The distros
> I'm familiar with configure bonding via sysfs, either directly in
> initscripts / sysconfig, or via a shell script ifenslave (which I
> believe is what Debian has).  Many distros still install it in
> /sbin/ifenslave, but it isn't used by the network configuration stuff.

The ifenslave package on Debian provide two things:

- The binary ifenslave, simply compiled from mainline ifenslave.c.
- A plug-in for ifupdown to allow for bonding related options in /etc/network/interfaces. I can 
confirm that this plug-in doesn't use the ifenslave command, but sysfs, since version 1.1.0-12 
(current stable version of this package is 1.1.0-17).

> 	The ifenslave.c in mainline is pretty much just a legacy for
> backwards compatibility; it has not had a bug fix since 2005 (a few typo
> repairs since then), and no major functional changes since before the
> git era.
>
> 	I was considering proposing feature removal for ifenslave.c and
> the ioctl API to add and remove slaves, but some discussion a few months
> ago indicated that there are apparently still some users out there (I'd
> guess embedded of some variety).

Unfortunately, there exist *many* how-to that suggest to use ifenslave, causing many users to use it 
instead of sysfs for bonding setup.

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.
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