Re: Patch to allow specification of interface name prefix

[Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org>]

On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 11:16:44 +0100
Jiri Benc <jbenc@suse.cz> wrote:

> [removed bcm43xx-dev list]
> 
> On Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:02:41 -0800, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> > This was hashed out on netdev 2+ years ago and decided that both ethernet
> > and wireless devices should show up as 'eth%d'. For inclusion d80211 needs to conform
> > to existing mainline kernel practice. If this means breaking the expectation of older
> > out of tree wireless support (ie madwifi), sorry.
> 
> Decided? I remember just you and hch saying "all existing wireless drivers
> do that, so everybody should". When pointing out that just two drivers do
> that (I think ipw and prism) and everybody else use something different
> (wlan%d most often) there was no reply. "ipw and one other driver do that
> so everybody should" doesn't sound like a strong argument to me.

Don't put too much stock in what I said. Really don't care about such
a trivial matter as naming.  Jeff and Christoph seem to care, I don't

> Wireless devices need different handling (setting SSID, etc.) than Ethernet
> ones. I think it's not so bad idea to show that difference by using a
> different default name. Everybody else who is in some kind different from
> Ethernet use different name than eth%d. I think we should conform to
> existing mainline practice by using something different than eth%d too.

As long as the tools work it shouldn't matter. There are some tools like
irqbalance that seem to have in bred assumptions.

A bigger issue for me would be getting NAPI to work right for wireless.



-- 
Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org>