Re: [RFC] longer netdev names proposal

[Jiri Pirko <jiri@resnulli.us>]

Fri, Jun 28, 2019 at 01:42:12PM CEST, mkubecek@suse.cz wrote:
>On Fri, Jun 28, 2019 at 01:12:16PM +0200, Jiri Pirko wrote:
>> 
>> I think that it is desired for kernel to work with "real alias" as a
>> handle. Userspace could either pass ifindex, IFLA_NAME or "real alias".
>> Userspace mapping like you did here might be perhaps okay for iproute2,
>> but I think that we need something and easy to use for all.
>> 
>> Let's call it "altname". Get would return:
>> 
>> IFLA_NAME  eth0
>> IFLA_ALT_NAME_LIST
>>    IFLA_ALT_NAME  eth0
>>    IFLA_ALT_NAME  somethingelse
>>    IFLA_ALT_NAME  somenamethatisreallylong
>> 
>> then userspace would pass with a request (get/set/del):
>> IFLA_ALT_NAME eth0/somethingelse/somenamethatisreallylong
>> or
>> IFLA_NAME eth0 if it is talking with older kernel
>> 
>> Then following would do exactly the same:
>> ip link set eth0 addr 11:22:33:44:55:66
>> ip link set somethingelse addr 11:22:33:44:55:66
>> ip link set somenamethatisreallylong addr 11:22:33:44:55:66
>
>Yes, this sounds nice.
>
>> We would have to figure out the iproute2 iface to add/del altnames:
>> ip link add eth0 altname somethingelse
>> ip link del eth0 altname somethingelse
>>   this might be also:
>>   ip link del somethingelse altname somethingelse
>
>This would be a bit confusing, IMHO, as so far
>
>  ip link add $name ...
>
>always means we want to add or delete new device $name which would not
>be the case here. How about the other way around:
>
>  ip link add somethingelse altname_for eth0
>
>(preferrably with a better keyword than "altname_for" :-) ). Or maybe
>
>  ip altname add somethingelse dev eth0
>  ip altname del somethingelse dev eth0

Yeah, I like this.

Let's see how it will work during the implementation.