Re: [RFC] longer netdev names proposal

[Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch>]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 11:23:05AM -0700, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Jun 2019 20:08:03 +0200
> Michal Kubecek <mkubecek@suse.cz> wrote:
> 
> > It often feels as a deficiency that unlike block devices where we can
> > keep one name and create multiple symlinks based on different naming
> > schemes, network devices can have only one name. There are aliases but
> > AFAIK they are only used (and can be only used) for SNMP. IMHO this
> > limitation is part of the mess that left us with so-called "predictable
> > names" which are in practice neither persistent nor predictable.
> > 
> > So perhaps we could introduce actual aliases (or altnames or whatever we
> > would call them) for network devices that could be used to identify
> > a network device whenever both kernel and userspace tool supports them.
> > Old (and ancient) tools would have to use the one canonical name limited
> > to current IFNAMSIZ, new tools would allow using any alias which could
> > be longer.
> > 
> > Michal
> 
>  
> That is already there in current network model.
> # ip li set dev eno1 alias 'Onboard Ethernet'
> # ip li show dev eno1
> 2: eno1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
>     link/ether ac:1f:6b:74:38:c0 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
>     alias Onboard Ethernet

Hi Stephen

$ ip li set dev enp3s0 alias "Onboard Ethernet"
# ip link show "Onboard Ethernet"
Device "Onboard Ethernet" does not exist.

So it does not really appear to be an alias, it is a label. To be
truly useful, it needs to be more than a label, it needs to be a real
alias which you can use.

     Andrew