Proposed F19 Feature: systemd/udev Predictable Network Interface Names

[Miloslav Trmač]

On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 8:57 PM, Bill Nottingham <notting at redhat.com> wrote:
> Matthew Miller (mattdm at fedoraproject.org) said:
>> > But I guess we simply have a different definition of a user here. Your
>> > definition is probably closer to what the page calls "admins", which is
>> > covered by the next lines in the feature page, which you didn't paste:
>>
>> Right. For Fedora, developers and admins are an important subset of users.
>>
>> > "As biosdevname is installed by default ...  most administrators won't
>> > see this either. "
>>
>> If the new scheme really is better, we should suck it up and make the whole
>> change. It'd be better to do what we can to make that transition easier --
>> like using similar names were possible -- than to have a weird mixed state.
>
> So, thinking - if we were to go this route, I think we'd want a clean
> break, where we don't use biosdevname at all if we're using this.
>
> The simplest way to do that would be:
> - change biosdevname to not be installed by default
> - enable these rules only on install, not on upgrade
> both of which are pretty easily doable.
>
> To quote the documentation, of the device name formats:
>
>  * Two character prefixes based on the type of interface:
>  *   en -- ethernet
>  *   wl -- wlan
>  *   ww -- wwan
>  *
>  * Type of names:
>  *   o<index>                              -- on-board device index number
>  *   s<slot>[f<function>][d<dev_id>]       -- hotplug slot index number
>  *   x<MAC>                                -- MAC address
>  *   p<bus>s<slot>[f<function>][d<dev_id>] -- PCI geographical location
>  *   p<bus>s<slot>[f<function>][u<port>][..][c<config>][i<interface>]
>  *                                         -- USB port number chain
>
> What concerns would people have with this naming? Off the top of my head:
>
> - wwan devices aren't always discoverable (they can show up as ethernet)
> - devices that biosdevname considers emX via enumeration/guessing would
>   now have enpXsY, which could be considered 'uglier'

Do we actually need to change the naming of onboard devices from emN ?
 I wouldn't be surprised to see em1 hardcoded the same way eth0 used
to be hardcoded.  Getting rid of the type-dependent prefix would also
resolve the wwan concern.
    Mirek