[ovs-dev] [PATCH 2/2] netdev: Allow explicit creation of netdev objects

Justin Pettit jpettit at nicira.com
Wed Dec 2 02:17:04 UTC 2009


On Dec 1, 2009, at 2:22 PM, Jesse Gross wrote:

> I think Ben covered the code level things pretty well, so I just have a couple of higher level comments/questions.  We don't necessarily need to address all of these right now but I want record them so they are less likely to get lost.
> 
> * Reconfigure and destroy never get called in bridge.c

Thanks.  These calls weren't strictly needed for TAP devices (the only kind that were supported in that patch), but they would be needed for more complicated devices like GRE and VDE.  The revised patch I sent out for review fixes that.

> * I would really like it if the system class could be made less special - ideally the only way that it would be different is that it is the default if no type is specified.  This will reduce the number of code paths and hopefully make things cleaner and easier to debug.  Obviously there are some issues here, so we'll leave it as it is now and possibly change it in the future as we get more experience with the new model.  Create should be called though, whether it is explicit or implicit.

I agree that the library still needs some work.  As we've discussed off-line, I think we should look at the library again once we get some experience with more complicated device configuration.

> * The Linux netdev has a cache of the device's state per-netdev.  Is there a reason why this can't be made shared state between multiple netdevs for the same device?

I believe the state is already shared in the "cache_map" shash object.  However, it would be clearer to store it instead in the netdev_obj_linux added in this patch.  I'd suggest we wait to make that cleanup until we've got a few free cycles.

> * Were you going to make similar changes for dpif?


Yes, but it's not affecting our current deadline, so I'm leaving it for the time-being.  It should be significantly easier than netdev, so I hope to look at it in the next couple of weeks.

--Justin






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