Re: [uml-devel] Re: What to do with uml_switch?

[Blaisorblade <blaisorblade_spam@yahoo.it>]

On Tuesday 07 December 2004 17:06, Steve Schmidtke wrote:
> Michael Richardson wrote:
> >     Steve> I like these 3, but could you not just connect another UML
> >     Steve> guest to the switch and run arp -s pub and tcpdump to
> >     Steve> accomplish the same thing?

> >   Sure, no problem :-)
> >   Please send:
> >  a) MORE RAM
> >     16-way system

> >  b) Paulo to come and debug why UMLs to "rogue", and clog up
> >     memory and system state.
> >     (Remember we start and stop some 1000 of them every night)
> >     The more that we run, the worse the situation.
??? Could you give more detail? If you're getting host memory leaks, maybe 
updating SKAS could help... please send a separate message on that... there 
was with -V1 a big memory leak in some unusual situations.
> >   Starting a UML to answer ARP and ICMP echo requests is silly.
> >   Particularly since our test system now takes 2-3 hours to run on a
> >multigigahertz box with lots of ram
>
> Agreed, it would be an unwieldy solution.  And it's obvious you need fine
> grained control to manage packets in your test environment, sorry if it
> sounded like I was telling you what you should do.  What I was trying to
> point out (and thinking out loud) is that an ARP generator can be connected
> *to* uml_switch, it doesn't have to be built *into* uml_switch.

> Strip down 
> the UML kernel's daemon_user.c and what you have is a framework to talk
> socket datagrams to a uml_switch.  Add code to accept and generate
> arbitrary ethernet frames, add you now have an independant pluggable
> diagnostic tool anyone can use on the fly.  This is a solution that would
> probably satisfy 95% of us mere mortals.

It seems reasonable to me too, and a good application of the Unix KISS 
principle...

This way, it is also easier to control the frame injection, since the injector 
is a separate program.

However I've seen the timing argument and the discussion went much further 
while I was away, which is good... as I said, I just wanted to make you start 
working on that, not to work on it myself, since I have 0 experience for 
this.

My only advice is to start packaging at least the initial work... Michael, you 
had offered to actually maintain uml_switch, so why don't you start merging 
at least the earliest Steve's cleanups?

Maintainance does not only mean development, also caring about such details 
and merging good patches from anybody else...
-- 
Paolo Giarrusso, aka Blaisorblade
Linux registered user n. 292729
http://www.user-mode-linux.org/~blaisorblade



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