[driver-discuss] Re: [brussels-dev] dladm show-linkprop enhancements

[sowmini.varadhan at sun.com]

On (06/26/07 12:14), Garrett D'Amore wrote:
>>
>> With Clearview UV, we're introducing the notion of a link "class" (so far:
>> aggregation, tunnel, vlan, vnic, and physical device), which is disjoint
>> from the underlying media.  There will be a "show" subcommand for each of
>> these classes, along with "create-*" and "delete-*" subcommands when
>> appropriate.  In other words, it's pretty regular and thus we hope it will
>> be fairly intuitive.

so would it make sense for "dladm show-linkprop <foo>" to produce 
output similar to the following:

LINK         PROPERTY        VALUE          DEFAULT        POSSIBLE             
<foo>         zone             ...
<foo>         mtu              ...

Ethernet properties:

  LINK       DUPLEX   CAPABLE       ADV           PEERADV
  <foo>       half     10M           10M           10M
  <foo>       full     10M,100M,1G   10M,100M,1G   10M,100M
  
(assuming that <foo> was ethernet)

i.e., the show-linkprop command recurses once by default to produce the
show-<linkclass> command?


>> WiFi is a bit of an "odd man out", in that we needed some way to
>> conveniently show important WiFi information.  I still have some regrets
>> regarding "show-wifi", but on the other hand it is easier to grok than a
>> sea of properties.

If we extend the above proposal for wifi, we would have 

# dladm show-linkprop wpi0
LINK         PROPERTY        VALUE          DEFAULT        POSSIBLE
wpi0         channel         10             --             --
wpi0         powermode       ?              off            off,fast,max
wpi0         radio           ?              on             on,off
wpi0         speed           54             --             1,2,5.5,6,9,11,12,18,
24,36,48,54
wpi0         zone            --             --             --

WiFi properties:

LINK       STATUS            ESSID               SEC    STRENGTH   MODE   SPEED
wpi0       connected         Radio Lsys          wep    very good  g      54Mb


the additional show-* command should only happen if a link is specified
in the command line, i.e., doing "dladm show-linkprop" should not result
in calls to show-<linktype>.

the "sea of commands" issue will be dealt with by the "-p" argument
(and there we would print the ethernet MII props exactly as defined
in the ieee802.3(5) page, for any script that wishes to parse the output).

Just a thought.

> Yes, but if a single administrative command is easier than setting a 
> half-dozen or so properties, wouldn't you choose that?  
> Particularly if you 
> could demonstrate that that single administrative command met the needs of 
> the vast majority of users?

Well, the dladm repository would remember the setting.
There's also other short-cuts like the shell alias, or wrapper scripts
for this purpose.

--Sowmini