Linux-ATM support.

[Lamar Owen]

Ok, a bit of introduction.  Due to some phenomenal eBay buys, I have a fairly 
elaborate ATM network here at PARI.  I have five 3Com CoreBuilder 7000 5Gbps 
switches, a dozen or so dual OC-12 cards, bunches of OC-3 cards, etc.

I have a Dell PowerEdge 1600SC running FC1 with a ForeRunner HE622 OC-12 NIC 
installed that is working very well with the linux-atm project's LANE code 
(oddly, I can't rebuild from source due to some fancy things a few of the 
low-level diag pprograms need from the kernel headers, but since the 
linux-atm project provides prebuilt binary RPMs that's not a big issue).  I 
get good bandwidth through the HE with a LANE LEC set up with the zeppelin, 
atmsigd, and ilmid setup as shipped with the linux-atm userland package.

So, I am setting up a second Dell 1600SC with another HE622 card to test the 
ATM cloud's performance.  This 1600SC is my testbed and is running FC2.  So I 
install the linux-atm userland, and attempt to use the HE.  Well, the .358 
kernel doesn't have the HE or any ATM drivers.  So I updated to the latest, 
and it has CONFIG_ATM unset, too.  My question to the kernel maintainers here 
(Arjan, Alan, and Dave) is simply 'Why no ATM?'  The ATM support is actively 
maintained, is production quality, etc.

The second question is 'how do you generate the configs used in the kernel 
SRPM' and is that tool available as part of the SRPM?  I will be recompiling 
with ATM support, but I want to use the Officially Approved rpmbuild 
--rebuild kernel-x.y.z-a.b.c.src.rpm method, since I want to distribute this 
kernel internally to all machines that will be running ATM cards.  I am not 
uncomfortable hand-editing the config file, but I know that that is 
suboptimal.

This of course is the Way to Do It since the desire is to not ship 
kernel-sourcecode anymore, so custom kernels have to come from the SRPM, 
which is fine by me as long as the configuration tools used to generate those 
prepackaged configs are available.

I am looking at system-config-network too for ATM support; I know this is not 
a RedHat-supported item, but it is something I will need at some point, since 
I want native ATM networking available to some of my users.
-- 
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu