On Thursday 31 March 2016 14:11:19 Simon Wunderlich wrote:
[...]
1.) sysfs flags (as in Linus original patch, or similar):
- can be integrated fast
- is already deployed and tested
- requires manual work by the admin, no automatism
- we can't expect that other VPNs/subsystems/etc will create automatisms to
specifically support batman-adv
- requires us to maintain a flag for a special userbase/use case
2.) TRANSITIVE flag as proposed by Linus
- outside of batman-adv (no maintenance work)
- can be set by the user through sysfs, similar to settings of batman-adv
- semi-automation possible: Other software like VPNs, or network drivers
could set this flag without specifically need to integrate with batman-adv (not sure if this would ever happen though)
- will take some time to be adopted: first it goes into the Linux kernel,
OpenWRT will have it when it updates to the new kernel. That could easily be 1-2 years
- requires more work with on other components, don't know if the various
upstream projects will want that
- linux-net adoption unclear (but there are already ~18 flags, why not have
one more)
- Personally, I don't like the name TRANSITIVE. What we really want to say
is whether we expect all other nodes in a broadcast domain to receive broadcasts sent by anyone. Maybe we could use a more clear/easier/common name?
short heads up here:
We had a longer phone call yesterday with Marek, Antonio, Linus, Sven and myself discussing this issue and how to move forward.
We agreed that the sysfs variant should be our last resort since we don't want to expose too many "tuning" options in batman-adv as we already discussed in this thread.
Instead, we want to try getting the TRANSITIVE flag into the kernel, which would not only leave the tuning outside of batman-adv but also enables other protocols and applications to do the right settings. Linus agreed to prepare a patch for that, and we will help pushing it.
Let's see how that goes. :)
Cheers, Simon