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Date:      Tue, 4 Jun 2002 09:57:10 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@cs.duke.edu>
To:        Archie Cobbs <archie@dellroad.org>
Cc:        Bosko Milekic <bmilekic@unixdaemons.com>, Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org>, Alfred Perlstein <bright@mu.org>, freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Race condition with M_EXT ref count?
Message-ID:  <15612.50998.79685.943067@moe.cs.duke.edu>
In-Reply-To: <200206040553.g545rXH49446@arch20m.dellroad.org>
References:  <20020603193651.A29296@unixdaemons.com> <200206040553.g545rXH49446@arch20m.dellroad.org>

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Archie Cobbs writes:
 > Re: the -stable patch. I agree we need a more general MFC/cleanup
 > of some of the mbuf improvements from -current into -stable.
 > If I find time perhaps I'll do that as well, but in a separate patch.
 > For the present time, I'll commit this once 4.6-REL is done.

The best improvements (IMHO, anyway) are the changes in the way
external mbufs are referenced and dereferenced.  It greatly simplifies
writing code that uses external mbufs.

However, you need to carefully consider what you backport.  We want to
try to avoid breaking ABI compatibility for 3rd party vendors who ship
binary network interface drivers.  At Myricom, we offer a binary driver
built on 4.1.1-RELEASE and it works through 4.5-RELEASE(*).  It would be
bad to loose this feature.    

So I'd oppose MFC'ing anything that breaks binary compatibility for
network drivers in the 4.x line.  The last thing we want to do is make
extra work for the few companies who offer FreeBSD drivers for their
hardare. 

Cheers,

Drew

(*) We also ship source, but building from source is somewhat of a pain.

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