From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Stephen Hemminger Subject: Re: [RFC] Stable interface index option Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2015 08:06:52 -0800 Message-ID: <20151201080652.5cba6f8b@xeon-e3> References: <20151201120420.GT12404@principal.rfc2324.org> <20151201153441.GA17843@oracle.com> <20151201155052.GA14984@principal.rfc2324.org> <1448985743.3387258.454809153.36540D70@webmail.messagingengine.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Maximilian Wilhelm , netdev@vger.kernel.org To: Hannes Frederic Sowa Return-path: Received: from mail-pa0-f46.google.com ([209.85.220.46]:35617 "EHLO mail-pa0-f46.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755817AbbLAQGp (ORCPT ); Tue, 1 Dec 2015 11:06:45 -0500 Received: by pacej9 with SMTP id ej9so9215004pac.2 for ; Tue, 01 Dec 2015 08:06:44 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <1448985743.3387258.454809153.36540D70@webmail.messagingengine.com> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Tue, 01 Dec 2015 17:02:23 +0100 Hannes Frederic Sowa wrote: > On Tue, Dec 1, 2015, at 16:50, Maximilian Wilhelm wrote: > > > I'm not sure I understand how this would work- are we going to > > > pin down the ifindex for some subset of interfaces? > > > > I'm not sure what your idea is, but I guess we might mean the same > > thing: > > > > What I have in mind is that the user can supply a list of (ifname -> > > ifindex) entries via a sysfs/procfs interface and if such a list is > > present, the kernel will search the list for every ifname which is > > registered and check if there is an entry. If there is, the ifindex > > for this entry is used. If there is no entry found for the given > > ifname, the usual algorithm is used (therefore inherently providing > > backward compatibility). > > Sorry to ask because I don't like this feature at all. There was a lot > of work on stable interface names. Why do you need stable ifindexes, > which were never meant to be stable for a longer amount of time? Also current versions of SNMP provide more useful information about network interface slot information in ifDescription