On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 12:14:14 -0500
Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@rek.tjls.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 05:08:03PM +0000, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> > On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 12:02:47 -0500
> > Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@rek.tjls.com> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > > 
> > > However, one should note that this ioctl appears in no standard
> > > and that we provide a much, much less crappy way for callers to
> > > get interface addresses.  It is probably much less effort to fix
> > > each broken caller as we notice it than to even bother to keep
> > > arguing about this.
> > > 
> > I agree with your analysis.  However, the problems that are popping
> > up are largely in pkgsrc applications, and let's face it -- Linux
> > is the primary target and test venue for most such applications.
> > What is Linux doing about the problems?
> 
> Evidently nothing

I'm shocked...  Other BSDs?  Solaris?  (Working with ISC would be a
good idea, since their dhclient is one of the affected applications.)

> the ioctl doesn't even return addresses of certain
> types on Linux, rendering it effectively useless except for IPv4-only
> applications (curiously, since we don't do much Linux work, I stumbled
> over this yesterday at work myself).
> 
They're presumably going to run into this pretty soon.


		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb