[ovs-dev] [PATCH 14/18] keep "kernel name" for each netdev

[Ben Pfaff]

On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 09:59:40AM -0800, Jesse Gross wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 9:40 AM, Ben Pfaff <blp at nicira.com> wrote:
> > I am not sure that OVS-created tap devices are that useful anyway.  I've
> > thought for some time of removing them from OVS entirely.  But it seems
> > that they are likely to be even less useful on netbsd.  Should we simply
> > not support them there?
> >
> > (OVS-created tap devices are distinct from tap devices created other
> > ways, which at least on Linux can be added to an OVS bridge in the usual
> > way and don't require any special support.  Thus, removing this feature
> > would not keep OVS from working with tap devices.)
> 
> I agree that tap devices as independent entities are useless in OVS.
> However, they are pretty useful as an implementation of internal ports
> in the userspace datapath.

Yes, I'd forgotten about that.  So we need them for BSD (and for
Linux without the kernel module), then.

One possibility is that we could add a way to report back the kernel
name, then store that in the database.  There would still be a race, I
think, where a tap device could get "leaked", but it would be better
than leaking them every time.