[Xorp-hackers] FEA is killed

Pavlin Radoslavov pavlin@icir.org
Tue, 16 Mar 2004 23:07:59 -0800


> As the failure was in the FEA, the first starting point would seem to
> be to check that the FEA passes all the validation tests on this
> platform.  I believe the FEA validation tests don't all run unless you
> run them as root (because they need to access priviledged kernel
> APIs).  So a good starting point would seem to be to cd to the fea
> directory, and from there run "gmake check" as root.
> 
> If all the tests pass, only then should we look Liang is doing
> differently.

The FEA root-specific tests use a different Makefile, hence they can
be run with "gmake -f MakefileRootCheck check" (as a root).
Unfortunately, due to the nature of the tests, the tests require
host-specific setup/entry. E.g., look into the beginning of
fea/test_config_interface.sh which contains the host-specific setup
(interface name to mess-up with, its expected index, Ethernet
address, etc).

I believe the problem is that the particular code in the FEA expects
the kernel to provide some specific information about an existing
network interface (the interface name), but that information is
missing. Given that this particular code works on our Linux machine,
my guess is that the missing information probably comes from the
removable wireless Ethernet card (e.g., if the card is removable
then the kernel doesn't fill-in the information?).

Unfortunately, I don't have a laptop with Linux installed on it to
verify that theory, but I will dig around. Once the reason is found
the fix will be easy.

Regards,
Pavlin