Re: ifconfig stopped loading driver

Yar Tikhiy wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 10:31:44AM -0700, Kevin Oberman wrote:
>>> Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 09:15:22 -0700
>>> From: "Kip Macy" <kip.macy_at_gmail.com>
>>>
>>> On 3/22/07, Kevin Oberman <oberman_at_es.net> wrote:
>>>> For a long time under V6 and current (and probably V5), if I issued an
>>>> ifconfig for my Atheros card, the driver (along with the HAL and rate
>>>> modules) would auto-load and my card would be found.
>>>>
>>>> Starting with my March 19 build, this no longer happens. I need to boot
>>>> single-user and manually load the module if I will need it. I don't want
>>>> the card to start by default since I don't want the radio on when I am
>>>> flying.
>>>>
>>>> Was this a deliberate change or did something break? It is a real pain.
>> O.K. It is clearly a deliberate change, although I am not sure the
>> effect is what was intended.
>>
>> The call to ifmaybeload(ifname) was moved inside of the if for a
>> "create" which applies to pseudo-devices, but not "real" interfaces. As
>> a result, the driver never gets loaded. I read the commit message, but I
>> don't think that this is the right way to fix the problem
>> described. (I'm not sure, what a better approach might be, though.)
>>
>> This breaks behavior that goes back over 7 years, having appeared in
>> the first release of V4. I can work around it, but it's going to be a
>> big surprise to many and it is sure a pain in the neck to me.
> 
> I readily admit that my change provoked your trouble.  When committing
> it, I took into account only cloned interfaces, but not hardware
> ones, perhaps because I had never used modules for hardware interfaces.
> 
> Nevertheless, I still think that the practice of loading the module
> on any ifconfig command is poor in spite of its age.  It can be
> worked around only by dirty hacks.  One of them is an ifconfig
> option not to load the module for devd scripts to use it when
> shutting down the interface.  Another one is to load the module
> only on "positive" ifconfig commands, such as "up" and "alias"
> (incl.  the first address,) but not on "negative" ones, e.g., "down"
> and "-alias" -- but what to do with "ifconfig -alias up" then?
> 
> Perhaps it's time to have "ifconfig foo0 load" along with "ifconfig
> bar0 create" to allow loading the module explicitly.  People even
> won't have to specify "load" in their rc.conf files as rc.d can add
> it for them when, and only when, the interface is started.
> 
> Comments?

I'm not a big fan of auto-loading the module either but it does change
existing practice.  I've also considered having ifconfig auto-load the
wlan_<crypto> modules when setting a crypto key so perhaps the best
compromise is to leave auto-loading enabled by default and add an option
to suppress it.

	Sam