Re: if_nameindex/getifaddrs and dhcpcd issue

[Rich Felker <dalias@aerifal.cx>]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 09:40:22AM +0200, u-igbb@aetey.se wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 09, 2014 at 06:20:41PM -0400, Rich Felker wrote:
> > Does if_nameindex "work" (modulo the issues with it) on BSD linux
> > emulation now, and would it fail if we switched to netlink or /proc
> > based? This is not necessarily a show-stopper but it would be nice if
> > we had a workaround, and it's something where we should have input
> > from users running musl binaries on BSD.
> 
> I'm not aware of which of the binaries may be calling if_nameindex. The
> ones which are being used continuously are Samba and Coda servers running
> on FreeBSD (for the sake of ZFS), their current production versions are
> still linked to uclibc.
> 
> Occationally I run "everything" i.e. a whole user environment in the
> form of Linux binaries on NetBSD but it will take some time before this
> happens and I test if_nameindex there.

I think these functions are mainly useful for network-configuration
utilities, not general user-facing apps. But I do want to make things
work for users who want to run a complete userspace of musl-linked
linux binaries on a BSD kernel.

At the moment I'm leaning towards a netlink-based approach despite my
moderate disgust with the netlink API simply because the alternative
(/proc) does not seem as possible as I thought it was; I can't see any
way to get a good parsable list of devices, including unconfigured
devices and aliases/multi-addresses, from /proc. If somebody knows how
and has a proposal for how it could be done, please speak up.

Rich