Network Interface Description

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Tue, Feb 09, 2010 at 13:06:03 -0500,
  Over Kill <overkill at sadiqs.net> wrote:
> All, is there a way to put in a description in the network interfaces like
> you can do in Cisco devices?  This way when I run the ifconfig -a command
> and I can view the description and remind myself of it's routing mechanism
> or what it's attached to.  I'm currently working in a overly architected
> network with no access and all our servers have multiple interfaces.  Thanks
> in advance.

A quick look at the ip man page doesn't show any way to conveniently comment
an interface.

There are a couple of possbible hacks you might consider.

You can set the mac address of most ethernet devices. That provides a
way to spell out a short label from a restricted set of characters.
(e.g. HWaddr DE:C1:A5:51:F1:ED)

Another thing you can do is label the addresses (actually network would be a
better description) attached to a device. This is an extension of the old alias
feature. This might have other ramifications though.
For example:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:40:05:33:E9:F7  
          inet addr:192.168.0.1  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:18 Base address:0xa000 

eth0:test label Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:40:05:33:E9:F7  
          inet addr:10.0.0.1  Bcast:0.0.0.0  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          Interrupt:18 Base address:0xa000