kern/102035: [plip] plip networking disables parallel port printing

[George Mitchell]

Brooks Davis wrote:
>
> On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 10:20:22PM -0700, Doug Barton wrote:
> > Your approach is interesting, but I'm not sure I like the idea of adding a
> > new semantic to the defaults file.
> >=20
> > Would you consider instead modifying network6_interface_setup in
> > network.subr to not automatically configure a plip interface if
> > ipv6_ifconfig_plipN is unset or null? That would accomplish the same thin=
> g,
> > but it would be behind the scenes.
>
> That's a fairly significant change since there's no requirement to explicit=
> ly
> set an address for an IPv6 interface and this would suddenly require it.
> It may be that the right thing to do with IPv6 interfaces is to require
> that ipv6_ifconfig_ifn be set to something but that would be a change.

There's no need to require an address for IPv6 interfaces in general.
All I would like to see is recognizing 'ipv6_ifconfig_<interface>="NOAUTO"',
which certainly parallels the IPv4 situation.

> In many ways I think the best thing to do is remove plip from GENERIC
> and be done with it.
>
> -- Brooks

I've discovered I omitted an important precondition to my bug: it
requires ipv6_gateway_enable to be set to YES.  So, here is the true
set of circumstances which leads to the problem:

ipv6_enable="YES"
ipv6_gateway_enable="YES"
GENERIC kernel

Removing plip from GENERIC would definitely solve this problem.
-- George Mitchell

P.S. Speaking of IPv6 networking, could someone take a quick look
at bug 102701, with my patch for an IPv6 ifconfig problem?