Bug or a feature? Interface groups on ifconfig

I do not understand your question ... Could you elaborate? What commands did you issue? What did you get? What did you expect to get?
 
Code: 
ifconfig em0 group default_wan
ifconfig em3 group backup_wan

ifconfig -a

I can't see any option group on output from ifconfig. Ifconfig groups are very coole with PF :)
 
The interface groups you define inside pf, are just for that. PF.
If you need to group them outside pf, systemwide, you have to look into Link Aggregation. (There is a chapter in the handbook about that)

I haven't used it myself as I didn't need to, but I think that you don't need to either (unless you have a high-availability server that can multipath its way out of the datacenter).
 
If it's just meaningful names you want, you can rename interfaces with ifconfig:

Code: 
ifconfig em0 name default_wan

Grouping is another kettle of fish though...
 
I use this feature for multible WANs. I can switch interface without change any things
in my pf.conf in real time. That is very nice.

i.e. I can monitor a wan connection (i.e. ping). If it going down I can change the
interface with monitor script.

For multi-path routing I use route-to function in pf. The default route for group is store in a table, so I can change the default route for the group also with monitor script.

You see, this is a very nice feature from pf, so you can make a very dynamical pf rules.

I think, it can be a future feature from ifconfig that I can see the ''groups''. I can set it with ifconfig but a can see it with ifconfig...
 
Interfaces groups are great, also default groups exist, egress (external default route group) and wlan (wireless group) comes to mind.
Sadly I have no FreeBSD at hand right now but did you try with:
[CMD=""]$ ifconfig <group_name>[/CMD]
Taken from OpenBSD ifconfig(8) "The interface parameter is a string of the form ``name unit'', for example, ``en0''. If no optional parameters are supplied, this string can instead be just ``name''. If an interface group of that name exists, all interfaces in the group will be shown."
 
xGhost said:
Is that a bug or a feature if I didn't seen a group with ifconfig?
Click to expand...

It's a feature. Use ifconfig -v to show groups.

I've not tested on FreeBSD but interface groups are useful with PF. You can have rules set without using interface names (except for a few options like skip).

Regards.
 
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