Yep, names like p4p1 are soooo much better than eth0 :-(

Tim ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au
Tue Nov 8 16:15:03 UTC 2011


On Tue, 2011-11-08 at 09:57 -0500, Lamar Owen wrote:
> The fact of the matter is that consistent PC device enumeration is a
> hard problem, and people are working towards making this more
> consistent and better from the end-users' points of view. And I
> appreciate the effort, even with the bugs.

I can't recall seeing this mentioned, so here goes:  Using the MAC, in
some way, *in* the device name.  I don't mean associating eth0 with a
specific MAC, like we can do at the moment with hand configuration.  I
mean the device name automatically containing something dependent on the
MAC.  Obviously not the whole thing, but maybe some maths done on its
values, to get it down to just four or five digits (e.g. eth0 would be
eth2345).

That gives you a clearcut way to always get the same device name with
the same NIC (including replacing a NIC with a cloned MAC).  And a way
to sort out which NIC is which device, in a multi-NIC box, if the NICs
are labelled.

Once again I'm reminded of how this was done on ye olde Amiga, where a
device name came from the device, itself (a ROM or firmware holding ID
data).


-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

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