Hi,<div class="gmail_quote">
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I've found that netconf project will be
in the GSoC'2008 and want discuss some details, cause it seems
interesting for me. I've some thoughts, but I need confirmation that
I'm thinking in correct or incorrect way. Below are some areas,
that I think, may be improved.<br></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">= 1 =<br>I want port netconf to FreeBSD (cause I
like FreeBSD last years more than Linux). For this purpose some
replacement is needed, cause netconf deeply relies on shell scripts,
that utilize iproute2. Actually that also prevents from porting
netconf to very old Linux distributions also (I don't know if they
are still used widely enough, but I've seen some of them still
working). The main idea is go away from running creation of objects
like:</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> runner = methods.Runner(somescript)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">One of possible solutions is to make
system dependent dictionary mapping event to some script and use it
like in such pseudocode:</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> runner =
RunnersFactory.createRunner(EVENT_NAME)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">where RunnersFactory is object with
such system dependent dictionary or may create Runners with other
than Runner(script_string) constructors.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Other one opportunity - forget about
scripts and use C module, which executes system calls. There are not
so many network related events, so one solid network related module
may handle all of them by cost of a little bit harder extensibility.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">= 2 =<br>Actually I've worked with DHCP-client
in PXE environment, so some DHCP related tasks such as lease renewal,
getting DHCP options and etc may implement without external DHCP
client and use python or C for this purpose. But DHCP protocol not
supports all needed options as wanted at ideas page (user may encapsulate
user-defined options in reply packet, but this is not common way).</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">= 3 =<br>I've looked through sources and found
that IP class uses only IPv4. it's better to revise all related
modules and provide partial support of IPv6 at least.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">= 4 =<br>May be policy and security related
problems. IMHO, syntax like squid acls is good enough. E.g.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">acl all_users user1 user2 group<br>acl bad_users user3<br>allow all_users interface control<br>deny bad_users interface any</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">where 'interface' may be just name for
module, or plugin, or some other keyword.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">= 5 =<br>Some kind of related plugins. E.g.
There is some task. Try first plugin, then next if first failed.
This may help use IPv6 (fall over to IPv4) and some other fall
overs from protocol to protocol. If plugin knows about plugin to failover
t, it's simple (just make event to handle by other plugin). But
if plugin has no such knowledge, some workaround is needed, e.g.
configuration files with list of plugins to use sequentially.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">= 6=<br>It seems good idea to extract plugins
from existing sources and make core really small core with a huge
amount of plugins, that now are only python based only (mainly cause
EventHandlers are python based). That also needs some specification
of core <-> plugins data exchange.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">= 7 =<br>May be some ACPI related events.
Usually (at least in FreeBSD) two scripts are used to handle power
state changes. So, new events must be implemented, that are generated
from this scripts. Not only power state change, but configuration
change (e.g. power for notebook Ethernet NIC is offed by switch,
driver is loaded, logical interface still exists but not works
really)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Thanks for any comments.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">---<br>best regards,<br><font color="#888888">Alexey</font></p>
</div><br>