From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@vyatta.com>
Subject: Re: network interface *name* alias support?
Date: Sat, 24 May 2008 11:12:47 -0700
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Cc: Thomas Graf <tgraf@suug.ch>, Rick Jones <rick.jones2@hp.com>,
	"Kok, Auke" <auke-jan.h.kok@intel.com>,
	Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@medozas.de>, johnathan@jonmasters.org,
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To: Jon Masters <jonathan@jonmasters.org>
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On Sat, 24 May 2008 00:25:55 -0400
Jon Masters <jonathan@jonmasters.org> wrote:

> 
> On Sat, 2008-05-24 at 00:54 +0200, Thomas Graf wrote:
> > * Jon Masters <jonathan@jonmasters.org> 2008-05-23 15:06
> > > My intention is to also allow for:
> > > 
> > > ifcfg-slot_<whatever>
> > > 
> > > Where the configuration is based entirely upon what vendor <XYZ> says is
> > > the first, second, or third card. Then, those who want to use the older
> > > names can continue to do so, but those who prefer to base their
> > > configuration upon the order the vendor states, can do so.
> > 
> > I'd propose to extend the netlink configuration interface, f.e. introduce a
> > new netlink attribtue IFLA_SLOT which can be provided to select the device
> > to be changed based on the slot number instead of the name/ifindex. That
> > would also make it trivial to write a small app using RTM_GETLINK to
> > translate a slot number to the corresponding interface name.
> 
> I guess that would also work quite nicely for what I want to do, but the
> problem is that this will require either:
> 
> *). The kernel decodes the DMI extension directly.
> *). We can first inform each device which slot it is in (set the slot).
> 
> My intention is to implement whatever seems reasonable, and my reason
> for asking is that I am not a networking maintainer, so I want to know
> what seems reasonable :)
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Jon.

If it is a physical device /sys/class/net/ethX/device is a link to
the actual device entry is /sys.



In newer kernels the contents /sys/class/net is just symlinks.