Re: "ifconfig -vlandev" syntax

On Sun, 2005-09-25 at 14:37 -0700, Brooks Davis wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 22, 2005 at 02:41:05PM +0400, Yar Tikhiy wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> > 
> > As our ifconfig(8) is growing more options for special interface
> > types, inconsistencies sneak into their syntax.  In particular,
> > -vlandev takes a useless argument (vlan(4) cannot attach to more
> > than one parent anyway) while, e.g., -carpdev doesn't need one.
> > Personally, I like the latter since having to type unneeded words
> > on the command line annoys me.  Do you think that making -vlandev
> > need no arguments in CURRENT would break many existing things?
> 
> I agree the argument is useless.  Unfortunatly, it's going to be hard to
> deprecate the old syntax so we may need to keep it around.

There's also the issue that the "vlan" and "vlandev" options have to be
specified in that order, which is counter-intuitive and undocumented.

leeloo# ifconfig vlan14 vlandev fxp0 vlan 14
ifconfig: must specify both vlan tag and device
leeloo# ifconfig vlan14 vlan 14 vlandev fxp0
leeloo#

Also, you can't set both the vlan and IP address information:
leeloo# ifconfig vlan14 vlan 14 vlandev fxp0 inet W.X.Y.Z netmask 255.255.255.0
ifconfig: inet: bad value

As a result of this, the only way to create vlans from rc.conf seems to
be in two stages, by renaming the interface:

cloned_interfaces="vlan14"
ifconfig_vlan14="vlan 14 vlandev fxp0 name somename"
ifconfig_somename="inet W.X.Y.Z netmask 255.255.255.0"

Which is less than ideal.  However, fixing these issues looks to be
non-trivial.

Gavin