From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: dann frazier Subject: Re: PATCH: Network Device Naming mechanism and policy Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:36:38 -0600 Message-ID: <20091013173638.GE1119@ldl.fc.hp.com> References: <20091009140000.GA18765@mock.linuxdev.us.dell.com> <20091013150839.GD32107@ldl.fc.hp.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-hotplug@vger.kernel.org, Matt_Domsch@Dell.com, Jordan_Hargrave@Dell.com, Charles_Rose@Dell.com To: Narendra_K@Dell.com Return-path: Received: from g1t0029.austin.hp.com ([15.216.28.36]:41112 "EHLO g1t0029.austin.hp.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753596AbZJMRhP (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:37:15 -0400 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: 1;2202;0cOn Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 10:43:49PM +0530, Narendra_K@Dell.com wrote: > > >> These device nodes are not functional at the moment - open() returns > >> -ENOSYS. Their only purpose is to provide userspace with a kernel > >> name to ifindex mapping, in a form that udev can easily manage. > > > >If the idea is just to provide a userspace-visible mapping > >(and presumably take advantage of udev's infrastructure for > >naming) does this need kernel changes? Could this be a > >hierarchy under e.g. /etc/udev instead, using plain text > >files? It still means we need something like libnetdevname for > >apps to do the translation, but I'm not seeing why it matters > >how this map is stored. Is there some special property of the > >character devices (e.g. uevents) that we're not already > >getting with the existing interfaces? > > Yes. The char device by itself doesn't help in any way. But it provides > a flexible mechanism to provide multiple names for the same device, just > the way it is for disks. Right - so any reason this couldn't be implemented completely in userspace by having udev manipulate plain text files under say /etc/udev/net/? I do agree that it would be nice for admins/installers to tweak/use nic names in a similar way to storage names (udev rules), and it might let us take advantage of a lot of the existing udev code. -- dann frazier