Dynamic loading of network kernel modules?

[David Horn]

I made a minor change to ifconfig to try kldloading the interface name
specified on the create wlandev XXXX (ifconfig already tries for
normal invocations, just needed to try with the wlandev interface)

/usr/src/sbin/ifconfig/ifieee80211.c

--- ifieee80211.c.original	2009-03-17 16:53:29.000000000 -0400
+++ ifieee80211.c	2009-03-17 16:53:43.000000000 -0400
@@ -4673,6 +4673,7 @@
 	    memcmp(params.icp_bssid, zerobssid, sizeof(zerobssid)) == 0)
 		errx(1, "no bssid specified for WDS (use wlanbssid)");
 	ifr->ifr_data = (caddr_t) &params;
+	ifmaybeload(params.icp_parent);
 	if (ioctl(s, SIOCIFCREATE2, ifr) < 0)
 		err(1, "SIOCIFCREATE2");
 }


This works nicely, however at startup, I still do not get the
interface up, or the kernel module loaded, so a second patch is
needed.

At issue is the list_net_interfaces() function in
/etc/rc.d/network.subr, which assumes that the greatest possible list
of interfaces is that which 'ifconfig -l' can give us.  Unfortunately,
this puts us in a bit of a chicken and egg situation for network
interfaces that are modules.

I also have a patch to network.subr that will look for any manually
configured interfaces in rc.conf that are not in the list of 'ifconfig
-l', and will try to start those interfaces as well. {specifically
looking for ifconfig_xxx and wlans_xxx and ipv6_ifconfig_xxx}

/etc/network.subr

--- network.subr.base_0317	2009-03-17 17:00:01.000000000 -0400
+++ network.subr	2009-03-17 17:10:15.000000000 -0400
@@ -690,6 +690,34 @@
 	return 0
 }

+# getconf_ifnames
+#       Return the value of all of the interfaces names referenced in rc.conf
+#	This is used to attempt to dynamically load kernel modules that
+#	are not already loaded, but could also be useful elsewhere
+#
+#	wlans_IF, ifconfig_IF, ipv6_ifconfig_IF are currently used
+getconf_ifnames()
+{
+	local val
+	matching_vars=`set | grep -e "ifconfig_" -e "^wlans_" | tr "\n" " "
| tr -d "'=."`
+	debug "Here is a list of all of the matching variables: $matching_vars"
+	for i in ${matching_vars}; do
+		val=""
+		val="`expr "${i}" : 'ifconfig_\([a-zA-Z]*[0-9]*\).*'`"
+		if [ -z "$val" ]; then
+			val="`expr "${i}" : 'wlans_\([a-zA-Z]*[0-9]*\).*'`"
+		fi
+		if [ val != "0" -a -n "$val" ]; then
+			interfaces="${interfaces} $val"
+		fi 	
+	done
+	
+	debug "Here are the rc.conf potential interfaces: $interfaces"
+	echo "$interfaces"
+	exit 0	
+}
+
+
 #
 # list_net_interfaces type
 #	List all network interfaces. The type of interface returned
@@ -712,6 +740,9 @@
 	[Aa][Uu][Tt][Oo])
 		_prefix=''
 		_autolist="`ifconfig -l`"
+		_manuallist="`getconf_ifnames`"
+		_autolist="$_autolist$_manuallist"
+		debug "list of all interfaces: $_autolist"
 		_lo=
 		for _if in ${_autolist} ; do
 			if autoif $_if; then



Is this something that people would be interested in having commited?
If so, I can clean up a little bit and remove the duplicate interfaces
and debugging, and add getconf_ifnames() in more places.  Both patches
are against current from today (031709).

--Thanks!

-_Dave Horn