2009/304 IP PROMISC Flag

[Sebastien Roy]

On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 11:31 -0400, James Carlson wrote:
> >  What they do care about is the meaning
> > of PROMISC flag when they see it in the ifconfig output.  You'll likely
> > need to specify something more administratively meaningful in the
> > ifconfig man page anyway, could that verbiage be specified in this case
> > please?
> 
> "The interface is in promiscuous mode."

heh, I guess I asked for that... :-)

> 
> What "promiscuous" actually means is likely highly dependent on the
> actual hardware in use, and probably can't be fully explained.  (Many
> of those old BSD interfaces seem to have been designed with Ethernet
> alone in mind, where the meaning for this sort of flag is obvious.)
> 
> > Does the flag have any semantics on IPMP interfaces?
> 
> No.  No virtual or IP-only interfaces have this flag.

Okay.

> 
> > What about lo0; should it ever appear there?
> 
> I wouldn't expect it.
> 
> > (the last two questions relate to my grumblings about this having little
> > to do with IP interfaces)
> 
> Agreed.  But sometimes you have to go with the crowd.

Yes, my understanding was that this is being introduced for familiarity
with other OSs.

Thanks,
-Seb