[gentoo-dev] Suitable USE flag name for stuff that requires non volatile memory

[Roy Marples <uberlord@gentoo.org>]

Hi List!

dhcpcd-3.1 is making good progress and is almost ready to be put into
the tree. One of it's new features is that it generates a DUID-LLT.
This has to be stored in non volatile storage, so it persists across
reboots. I would like a nice USE flag name, so it can be compiled with
or without that support. My ideas so far.

duid
duid-llt
(both descriptive, but doesn't actually mean anything to most users)

livecd
(only a livecd is volative, even embedded devices have non volative
storage)

volatile

More are welcome :)

For those that are interested in what a DUID is, read on. A DUID (DHCP
Unique IDentifier) is a unique identifier to the machine that should
never change and is used along with an IAID (Identity association
identifier). Simply put its a means of identifying the machine and the
interface. The DHCP specification allowed >1 interface per machine, but
with the advent of dynamic DNS it's near impossible to match machines
and interfaces reliably. This allows just that so in the future servers
can get a list of IP's for a name instead of just the last/first one in.

It's also required for DHCP over infiniband and IPv6.

The big downside is that it does require non volative storage or you
could get a big long list because ...... interfaces can be changed into
other machines, so part of the DUID is a time stamp. Once you have a
DUID, it should never change.

Of course, the RFC's that define all this seem to have forgotten about
dual booting different OS's, but that's not our problem :)

Thanks

Roy
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