Paravirtualized Drivers for Fully Virtualized xVM Domains [PSARC/2007/664 FastTrack timeout 11/30/2007]

[Glenn Brunette]

James Carlson wrote:
> John Plocher writes:
>> Tim Marsland wrote:
>>> Template Version: @(#)sac_nextcase 1.64 07/13/07 SMI
>>>
>>> 1. Introduction
>>>     1.1. Project/Component Working Name:
>>> 	 Paravirtualized Drivers for Fully Virtualized xVM Domains
>>> 	    For network devices, however, the user experience will be less
>>> 	    satisfying. ...  Since Solaris binds the identity of a
>>> 	    system to its NIC name, the user will have to sys-unconfig and
>>> 	    reconfigure the domain.
>> sys_unconfig is a pretty big hammer to use for this - isn't it sufficient
>> to just rename /etc/hostname.rtls# to /etc/hostname.xnf#, assuming that the
>> user can determine the mapping between the two?
> 
> Renaming a driver is a serious pain.  It's not just /etc/hostname.*
> that's affected, it's /etc/dhcp.* and potentially many other files
> such as /etc/ipf/ipf.conf and /etc/ipf/ipnat.conf, /etc/gateways,
> /etc/sfw/smb.conf, /etc/inet/dhcpsvc.conf, /etc/inet/ndpd.conf,
> /etc/quagga/*.conf, /etc/zones/*.xml, and probably dozens of others
> that I'm too lazy to locate at the moment.
> 
> Basically, as we said with the ipge transition before (2004/782), you
> can't do it in any non-trivial configuration.

While I agree with you on these points, sys-unconfig will not help with
many of these either, right?  It sounds like we need a better option
than just sys-unconfig - one that could (ideally) understand these
relationships or at the very least reset them to default values (saving
the original content)?  Today, I would argue it is just too easy to
do sys-unconfig - follow the rules - and still get fowled up because
of other settings that sys-unconfig does not know about.

g