From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Patrick McHardy Subject: Re: Vlan interface nuisance Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:52:52 +0100 Message-ID: <49AC5534.2090102@trash.net> References: <20090301204731.40ce346a@nehalam> <20090302172057.GA23247@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> <49AC2A9C.5090303@gmail.com> <49AC2BD1.4070209@candelatech.com> <49AC2E32.2020403@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Ben Greear , Lennart Sorensen , Stephen Hemminger , netdev@vger.kernel.org To: Jarek Poplawski Return-path: Received: from stinky.trash.net ([213.144.137.162]:55214 "EHLO stinky.trash.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752844AbZCBVw4 (ORCPT ); Mon, 2 Mar 2009 16:52:56 -0500 In-Reply-To: <49AC2E32.2020403@gmail.com> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Jarek Poplawski wrote: > Ben Greear wrote, On 03/02/2009 07:56 PM: > >> Jarek Poplawski wrote: >>> Lennart Sorensen wrote, On 03/02/2009 06:20 PM: >>> >>>> On Sun, Mar 01, 2009 at 08:47:31PM -0800, Stephen Hemminger wrote: >>>>> Why is interface created through netlink named 'vlan0' and >>>>> interface created through old vconfig called 'ethX.YY'. >>>>> Seems like the interface should be consistent. >>>> That does seem silly. >>>> >>>> ethX.YYYY told you which physical interface and which vlan number it was. >>>> >>>> vlan0 tells you nothing useful. >>> >>> >>> Even if you have only one ethX? >> Yes...the old way would tell you the vlan-id regardless of how >> many NICs you have, which is useful information for anyone >> actually trying to configure two boxes to talk to each other, >> or (god forbid), debug someone else's config. >> >> It's true you can specify the vlan-name on creation using 'ip', >> which is what I do, so I'm not going to argue Stephen's change >> either way..but I do like device names that give more info... > > To make it clear: I don't say vlan0 is better; but IMHO it doesn't > have to be silly or nothing useful either. Admittedly, this part of the rtnl_link interface could be improved. The names are allocated centrally when unspecified, which imposes this fixed naming scheme. A simple callback to choose a better name than just incrementally counting up interfaces types would allow to at least choose a default name of ethX.xyz or something similar. I refuse to introduce the selectable naming schemes to this interface though, this can easily be done in userspace.