Subject: bug#52520: Multicast is off by default

From: Mathieu Othacehe <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2021 12:08:05 +0100

Hey,

> Is it #:multicast-on or #:allmulticast-on ?

The "ip link set multicast ..." command corresponds to the the
IFF_MULTICAST flag hence to the #:multicast-on parameter.

> Anyhow, I suggest adding a ‘multicast?’ field to <network-address>, with
> #t as its default value, and honoring this.

I'm not sure <network-address> is the right place for this flag. If
there are two <network-address> records in the same list, one for ipv4
and one for ipv6 it means that we need to repeat this flag twice.

Same for the MTU, having different MTU for ipv4 and ipv6 addresses
doesn't have any meaning. The MTU and multicast properties belong to the
device itself.

I think we should introduce a <network-device> record that would gather
the properties that can be passed to the "link-set" method of
Guile-Netlink. The <static-networking> record would point to a unique
<network-device>. We would remove the device field from
<network-address>.

Then each <static-networking> service would provision (concat
'networking- (network-device-name device)) or something like that, to fix
https://issues.guix.gnu.org/52511 as well.

How does that sounds?

Thanks,

Mathieu