I appriciate your consideration!
But I'm afraid to say that, as you said, my patch depends os some FEFS-specific changes, so I think I'd better collect some codes, change them and apply them for, at least, 1.8.8. I believe that you'll find it easer when I do it than when I don't.
I'll upload the patch within today in JST, please wait for a while.
and thank you for your consideration again !!
I opened a separate ticket LU-2898 to track the issue of client eviction notification, so please use it for further discussion on this topic and let's concentrate on the disabled pinging support in this ticket.