[User-mode-linux-devel] slip vs ethertap

[Jeff D. <jd...@ka...>]

My current umn network driver uses slip as the kernel-to-user communications 
mechanism.  I'm unhappy with this for two reasons:
	- the slip device needs to be ifconfig-ed, which means that either the kernel 
needs to be run as root, or there needs to be a setuid ifconfig available 
(i.e. um_ifconfig).
	- there is no obvious way to configure both ends (especially the host end) of 
the channel from the boot scripts.

I don't see that using ethertap helps either of these.  /dev/tap* still needs 
to be ifconfig-ed, which still needs root privs somehow.  And using a 
different communications mechanism to the hosting kernel doesn't seem to 
change the problem of getting the host end ip address into the driver from the 
networking layer above it.

Is this right?  Are there any advantages to using ethertap that I've 
overlooked?

				Jeff