Re: Patch to allow specification of interface name prefix

[Larry Finger <larry.finger@lwfinger.net>]

Pavel Roskin wrote:
> Quoting Alex Davis <alex14641@yahoo.com>:
> 
>> This patch will allow you to specify the interface name prefix of wireless
>> devices.
>>
>> On my machine, the wireless devices under the bcm43xx driver are named
>> 'ethx'; I
>> would really rather have them called 'wlanx', like bcm43xx-d80211 does.
> 
> You can use ifrename from wireless tools.  Use the option that checks the
> ethtool information.
> 
> Jean has just released Wireless Tools 29-pre12, which can read symlinks in
> sysfs.  That would allow renaming d80211 based network devices by checking the
> "driver" symlinks in sysfs.  I asked Jean to do that with bcm43xx_d80211 in
> mind.
> 
> It's not that I'm against your patch.  I'm rather ambivalent.  But I think using
> ifrename could reduce the need in kernel support for interface renaming.

NACK.

On my system (openSUSE 10.2), one sets the name in /etc/udev/rules.d/30-net_persistent_names.rule. I
feel that interface renaming is handled perfectly well in userland, and kernel support is not needed.

Larry