[PATCH] Make IPv6 built-in.

[Neil Horman]

On Tue, Jun 07, 2011 at 01:28:30PM -0400, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> 1) It can't be unloaded anyway.
> 2) If it's a module, it will be loaded at entirely random times, depending
> on what sockets a user opens, what functions they call, etc. For example,
> 'ping6 -?' loads IPv6.
> 3) Because of its modularity, users attempt to disable it in a variety of
> misguided ways, which may or may not work depending on when the module is
> loaded.
> 4) Because of its unpredictability of loading, setting IPv6 sysctls for an
> interface becomes complicated. It requires both the presence of the device,
> and the presence of the IPv6 module; however, these events aren't tied
> together.
> 
5) It solves alot of dependency issues - i.e. bonding/bridging and several other
modules are dependent on ipv6.ko, and people often try to disable ipv6 by
blacklisting it, which inadvertently breaks the aforementinoed modules.

> By building in IPv6, we solve these issues, and make the behavior of
> the system more predictable. Plus, hey, it's the future.
> 
> To disable IPv6, boot with:
> 
> 	ipv6.disable_ipv6=1 (to disable IPv6 addresses on all interfaces)
> 
> or
> 
> 	ipv6.disable=1 (to render the entire module non-functional)
Can we not promote this method, I'd really like to see it go away upstream, its
a hack, the disable_ipv6 sysctl is really the way to go.


+1 to making ipv6 built-in though.
Neil

> ---
>  config-generic |    2 +-
>  1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/config-generic b/config-generic
> index 6b18a41..524e8fd 100644
> --- a/config-generic
> +++ b/config-generic
> @@ -814,7 +814,7 @@ CONFIG_IP_VS_NQ=m
>  CONFIG_IP_VS_FTP=m
>  CONFIG_IP_VS_PE_SIP=m
>  
> -CONFIG_IPV6=m
> +CONFIG_IPV6=y
>  CONFIG_IPV6_PRIVACY=y
>  CONFIG_IPV6_ROUTER_PREF=y
>  CONFIG_IPV6_ROUTE_INFO=y
> -- 
> 1.7.5.2
> 
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