netdev - Re: [PATCH net-next] net: appletalk: remove Apple/Farallon LocalTalk PC support

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Message-ID: <0078ff43-f9fa-1deb-b64d-170d3d93ee6f@workingcode.com>
Date:   Thu, 12 May 2022 14:11:55 -0400
From:   James Carlson <carlsonj@...kingcode.com>
To:     Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>, Doug Brown <doug@...morgal.com>
Cc:     Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>,
        David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
        Networking <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
        Paolo Abeni <pabeni@...hat.com>,
        Eric Dumazet <edumazet@...gle.com>,
        Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
        Jiapeng Chong <jiapeng.chong@...ux.alibaba.com>,
        "open list:DOCUMENTATION" <linux-doc@...r.kernel.org>,
        Paul Mackerras <paulus@...ba.org>, linux-ppp@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next] net: appletalk: remove Apple/Farallon LocalTalk
 PC support

On 5/11/22 04:23, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> indication of appletalk ever being supported there, this all looks
> IPv4/IPv6 specific. There was support for PPP_IPX until it was
> dropped this year (the kernel side got removed in 2018), but never
> for PPP_AT.
> Adding Paul Mackerras to Cc, he might know more about it.

I waited a bit before chipping in, as I think Paul would know more.

The ATCP stuff was in at least a few vendor branches, but I don't think
it ever made it into the main distribution. These commits seem to be
where the (disabled by default) references to it first appeared:

commit 50c9469f0f683c7bf8ebad9b7f97bfc03c6a4122
Author: Paul Mackerras <paulus@...ba.org>
Date:   Tue Mar 4 03:32:37 1997 +0000

    add defs for appletalk

commit 01548ef15e0f41f9f6af33860fb459a7f578f004
Author: Paul Mackerras <paulus@...ba.org>
Date:   Tue Mar 4 03:41:17 1997 +0000

    connect time stuff gone to auth.c,
    don't die on EINTR from opening tty,
    ignore NCP packets during authentication,
    fix recursive signal problem in kill_my_pg

The disabled-by-default parts were likely support contributions for
those other distributions. (Very likely in BSD.)

I would've thought AppleTalk was completely gone by now, and I certainly
would not be sad to see the dregs removed from pppd, but there was a
patch release on the netatalk package just last month, so what do I know?

(The only possible reason I can see to keep any ATCP bits around at all
is to make sure we can write nice-looking log messages -- to say we're
rejecting "AppleTalk Control Protocol" rather than "unknown 8029." But
that'd be a very minor feature.)

-- 
James Carlson     42.703N 71.076W FN42lq08    <carlsonj@...kingcode.com>