[OmniOS-discuss] LX for OmniOS update

[Dan McDonald]

In general, and I will have to make this EVEN CLEARER -- LX zones' networking is controlled by tools in /native.  No iptables... I'm surprised the linux-native ifconfig(8) works, but that's likely due to some legacy ioctl support that's already in the LX brand kernel code.

One open design question in LX for OmniOS is how to address the networking configuration problem?  I see two ways:

1.) Adopt the Joyent way of having some networking parameters in zonecfg(1M) attributes and having zoneadmd or the boot scripts act on these.  The vmadm(1M) of SmartOS works like this once you get to where it meets existing illumos zone utilities.

2.) Further modify the native networking tools to store their between-boots state in a place, for example, "/etc/native", that allows persistent actions of /native/ utilities like they'd behave for an illumos-native zone (ipkg, lipkg in OmniOS).  Right now, you can't ipadm(1M) an interface's address permanently on an LX zone because /etc/inet isn't around.

I see pros & cons of both approaches.  I'm visiting OmniTI HQ in a week to, among other things, bounce ideas around with OmniTI folks - since they are also my customers.  Feel free to speak up here if you have opinions as well.

Thanks,
Dan