Re: IP_MASQ: Difference between 2.0.31 and 2.1.x

Nigel Metheringham (Nigel.Metheringham@ThePLAnet.net)
Wed, 12 Nov 1997 09:54:58 +0000


I guess that maybe talking to the people down as IP masq maintainers might
have been sensible.

There is currently some background work going on with IP Masq, but it has
not been taken into the current dev kernels - this will happen when its
got to some degree of usability. It has not been thought worth taking the
incremental changes through into the dev kernels because they are dead end
work - the new IP Masq stuff is very different and pretty much all
existing code will be disposed of in the process.

If you want a justification of what went into the 2.0.x kernels, then you
will find basic bug fixes around 2.0.[12] and then a slew of stuff at
2.0.30. I was asked to roll in the various additional support patches
when the ISS changes went into 2.0.30. A few additional minor fixes have
been added in 2.0.31. The masq mods are very minor compared to the big
stuff that changed in 2.0.30. Whether the 2.0.30 changes were a good idea
or not is another issue (I did suggest a 3 track kernel a long time back
- stable bug fix only, incremental development, blue sky development).

Why not join the masq list or the masq development list if you are really
interested. Otherwise there is always the standard Linux way - "if you
want it done, code it!", just don't criticise people who have put in a
load of work for not giving you everything on a plate. [Incidently, I and
the company I work for have provided one hell of a lot of input into this
stuff. We could have done things in other ways so that we did not feed
back all our development directly into the free code tree; windging like
yours sometimes makes me wonder whether other options would have been more
sensible].

[Not intended to be a flame, but I think my goat was got there... :-( ]

Nigel.

-- 
[ Nigel.Metheringham@theplanet.net   -  Systems Software Engineer ]
[ Tel : +44 113 251 6012                   Fax : +44 113 224 0003 ]
[      Real life is but a pale imitation of a Dilbert strip       ]