From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ben Hutchings Subject: Re: Devices with colon in name (iproute2 bug) Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:25:05 +0000 Message-ID: <1290086705.3818.63.camel@localhost> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org To: =?UTF-8?Q?=C5=A0tefan_Sakal=C3=ADk?= Return-path: Received: from exchange.solarflare.com ([216.237.3.220]:49356 "EHLO exchange.solarflare.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756514Ab0KRNZJ convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Thu, 18 Nov 2010 08:25:09 -0500 In-Reply-To: Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Thu, 2010-11-18 at 13:14 +0100, =C5=A0tefan Sakal=C3=ADk wrote: > Hi, > When I add a device with colon via ip (from git 3f5c1a01): > ip link add dev 'a:b' type dummy > then ip link show dev 'a:b' returns > 12: a:b: mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN > ioctl(SIOCGIFXQLEN) failed: No such device >=20 > link/ether 9e:44:b4:ec:77:f1 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff >=20 > Also ifconfig from net-tools returns > a: error fetching interface information: Device not found > but I guess it's obsolete. Linux originally only supported one address per address-family per interface. Additional addresses had to be assigned to 'alias interfaces' which were named :. For backward compatibility, colons in interface names are reserved for this purpose. If you can create regular interfaces with colons in their names, this seems to be a kernel bug. Ben. --=20 Ben Hutchings, Senior Software Engineer, Solarflare Communications Not speaking for my employer; that's the marketing department's job. They asked us to note that Solarflare product names are trademarked.