ipfwshow as shell builtin?

[Kris Kennaway]

On Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 04:05:06PM +0700, Eugene Grosbein wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> There are some tasks that are can be easily and efficiently solved
> with ipfw(8). For example, it can summarize traffic delivered
> over ethernet with unicast packets (ipfw2 feature), or make sums
> of traffic from/to distinct network blocks. It's not about generic
> detailed traffic accounting, it's about simple sums (f.e. for MRTG).
> 
> The problem is how to get these values easly and efficiently for
> the same time. To supply values for MRTG I use net-snmpd and its
> 'pass_persist' feature (think about one MRTG and many monitires hosts).
> 
> Simple shell script uses 'ipfw show' to return values.
> It is easy but still is not very optimal. There is additional
> fork+exec of /sbin/ipfw still.
> 
> It would be nice to have something lightweight like 'ipfwshow'
> as /bin/sh builtin, isn't it?

Dear god, no!  How many hundred times per second are you running ipfw
for the overhead to be non-negligible?

Kris

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