From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Apr 26 00:51:07 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id AAA09752 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Sun, 26 Apr 1998 00:51:07 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from mail.ic.dk (qmailr@mail.ic.dk [194.255.107.174]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id AAA09743 for ; Sun, 26 Apr 1998 00:51:00 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jacob@jblhome.ping.dk) Received: (qmail 9089 invoked from network); 26 Apr 1998 07:50:57 -0000 Received: from ic1.ic-local (HELO ic1.ic.dk) (192.168.65.12) by ic4.ic.dk with SMTP; 26 Apr 1998 07:50:57 -0000 Received: from jblhome by ic1.ic.dk with UUCP id AA11844 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4j); Sun, 26 Apr 1998 09:49:42 +0200 Received: (from jacob@localhost) by pippin.jblhome.ping.dk (8.8.8/8.8.8) id JAA01279; Sun, 26 Apr 1998 09:53:39 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from jacob) To: Terry Lambert Cc: mike@smith.net.au (Mike Smith), cshenton@it.hq.nasa.gov, archie@whistle.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Discussion : Using DHCP to obtain configuration. References: <199804180834.BAA08866@usr01.primenet.com> From: Jacob Bohn Lorensen Date: 26 Apr 1998 09:53:37 +0200 In-Reply-To: Terry Lambert's message of Sat, 18 Apr 1998 08:34:11 +0000 (GMT) Message-Id: <87hg3h2f3y.fsf@pippin.jblhome.ping.dk> Lines: 31 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 X-Charset: ISO_8859-1 X-Char-Esc: 29 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Terry Lambert writes: > > > > > The way UNIX piles random configuration information all into > > > > > /etc has always bugged the crap out of me. Ideally, /etc > Basically, it's a big cache coherency problem; all the data that > gets changed and results in the wrong thing happening is "cached" in > the program doing the wrong thing. So what we need is, maybe a new signal? SIGCONF? by default it is ignored. Processes that need to know when configuration changes, can establish a handler for this signal and ``do the right thing'' when ip address et al changes. (sounds a lot like the SIGHUP convention, although a bit more structured). I guess another syscall might come in handy too: ``please notify when this-and-that registry values change'', i.e. sigconf_mask(). Maybe we need to be able to select()/poll() on registry changes as well. With such a mechanism in place, we can start converting userland programs to actually use it. It may actually prove to be not so difficult---many programs already have re-read-configuration handlers for SIGHUP. Jacob -- Jacob Lorensen; Mosebuen 33, 1.; DK-2820 Gentofte, Denmark; +45-31560401 PGP ID = E596F0B5; PGP Fingerprint = 1E8726467436DC4A 723B6678C5AD9E71 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message