From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Bill Nottingham Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:45:28 +0000 Subject: Re: PATCH: Network Device Naming mechanism and policy Message-Id: <20091012174528.GB22736@nostromo.devel.redhat.com> List-Id: References: <20091009140000.GA18765@mock.linuxdev.us.dell.com> <20091009210909.GA9836@auslistsprd01.us.dell.com> <20091009194401.036da080@nehalam> <20091010044056.GA5350@mock.linuxdev.us.dell.com> <20091010052308.GA12458@kroah.com> In-Reply-To: <20091010052308.GA12458@kroah.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: Greg KH Cc: Matt Domsch , Stephen Hemminger , netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-hotplug@vger.kernel.org, Narendra_K@dell.com, jordan_hargrave@dell.com Greg KH (greg@kroah.com) said: > > Today, port naming is completely nondeterministic. If you have but > > one NIC, there are few chances to get the name wrong (it'll be eth0). > > If you have >1 NIC, chances increase to get it wrong. > > That is why all distros name network devices based on the only > deterministic thing they have today, the MAC address. I still fail to > see why you do not like this solution, it is honestly the only way to > properly name network devices in a sane manner. > > All distros also provide a way to easily rename the network devices, to > place a specific name on a specific MAC address, so again, this should > all be solved already. No, it's not solved. Even if you have persistent names once you install, if you ever re-image, you're likely to get *different* persistent names; the first load will always be non-detmerministic. The only way around this would be to have some sort of screen like: Would you like your network devices to be enumerated by [ ] MAC address [ ] PCI device order [ ] Driver name [ ] Other which is just all sorts of fail in and of itself. Especially since once you get to the point where you can coherently ask this in a native installer, the drivers have already loaded. Bill