Using biosdevname by default?

[Scott Sanbar]

?
On Feb 5, 2012 1:52 PM, "Martin Pitt" <martin.pitt at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> Colin Watson [2012-01-31 14:29 +0000]:
> > There are certainly some advantages to enabling biosdevname by default.
> > On systems that support it, it makes it somewhat easier to write scripts
> > that predictably apply to a certain interface without having to mess
> > around with looking up interfaces by MAC address.
>
> I agree that in many situations where you work with multiple
> interfaces, stable names would be much preferrable.
>
> > [...]
> > Secondly, while as I said above I agree that enabling biosdevname solves
> > some problems, it seems likely that this change will cause problems of
> > its own.  For example, any software that needs to know about network
> > interfaces (let's say it listens on a particular interface) might well
> > default to eth0
>
> Stephane confirmed that this is an actual problem in his reply.
>
> This situation has a striking similarity with stable names for block,
> sound, and input devices. There was a time when the "classic" names
> like hda/sda went away entirely, but this situation never lasted very
> long because of pretty much exactly this problem: too much software
> making hardcoded assumptions about device names.
>
> That's why the current policy eventually distilled itself: it is
> actively wrong, and now even unsupported by udev to rename devices, so
> schemas like "sd[a-z][0-9]"  or input/event* will always continue to
> work. Instead, the only thing you can and should do is to create
> aliases in the form of symlinks (/dev/disks/by-uuid/,
> /dev/input/by-id/, etc.)
>
> Now, unfortunately network devices have always been special in that
> they are not proper character devices, so symlinks don't work.  But as
> the kernel supports renaming devices, is there any way of providing
> the same devices under two names, i. e. adding aliases instead of
> ifrename? interfaces(5) already supports mappings and renames, so from
> my naive POV it seems this shouldn't be too hard to get a concept of
> aliases? Perhaps even the Dell folks would be interested in this, as
> it would remove the main blocker for adoption?
>
> If we can get this to work, then I see no reason to not introduce
> biosdevname, as it would not break any existing setup, local
> configuration, or hardcoded assumption.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Martin
> --
> Martin Pitt                        | http://www.piware.de
> Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com)  | Debian Developer  (www.debian.org)
>
> --
> ubuntu-devel mailing list
> ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
> Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-server/attachments/20120206/a75c6040/attachment.html>