From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jon Masters Subject: Re: network interface *name* alias support? Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 16:55:37 -0400 Message-ID: <1211576137.11907.59.camel@perihelion> References: <4836FB73.2010709@intel.com> <4837026A.6000702@hp.com> <1211569604.11907.37.camel@perihelion> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Rick Jones , "Kok, Auke" , johnathan@jonmasters.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org, dwmw2@infradead.org To: Jan Engelhardt Return-path: Received: from dallas.jonmasters.org ([72.29.103.172]:43953 "EHLO dallas.jonmasters.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756116AbYEWUzx (ORCPT ); Fri, 23 May 2008 16:55:53 -0400 In-Reply-To: Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Fri, 2008-05-23 at 22:46 +0200, Jan Engelhardt wrote: > On Friday 2008-05-23 21:06, Jon Masters wrote: > >> > bus-info: 0000:00:19.0 > >> > >> And if it happens to be in a hotplug slot today with a suitable hotplug > >> module (term?) loaded like acpiphp you can then map that to a more human > >> friendly slot number/name. In the future, once Alex Chiang's pci slots > >> patches make it to mainline it will be possible even with non-hotplug slots. > > > >Yep, that's all great until the bus topology changes underneath you. > >There is a need for alias support, because it will allow distributions > >to assign a name based upon the *slot ordering specified by the vendor* > >and therefore allow a consistent slot number no matter what hotplug > >happens, what devices are added or removed, which devices are on-board > >vs. in cards, and even (eventually) for non-PCI cards. > > > >In the case of Fedora, right now, we have files: > > > >ifcfg-eth > > While it's gone now, openSUSE had support for ifcfg-bus-pci-0000:00:19.0 > in versions prior to 10.3. I suggest you kindly ask they reinstate it > because with Fedora it is probably not going to happen that they > bus-pci-.. gets added in the first place. Yes but *that isn't what I'm talking about* :) That doesn't infer the physical ordering of the devices on the back of the machine, does it? How do I know which device is labeled "0" on the back of the machine, and in the vendor documentation? The answer is, because they added a DMI extension to tell us this information. So let's please stop thinking about physical bus ordering and instead view this as a simple problem of wanting to add an alias based on what the vendor reports should be the ordering of the devices in the system :) Jon.