Peter,
I think hiding the physical name is right. Today we use often the 
physical name to get information about the usable feature of a driver. 
So if it's planned to get a GUI to show what interface is really behind 
e.g. net0 a good (and maybe more useful) extension to that would be to 
list the possible feature, that can be used with this interface:
- Autosensing with Speed
- tagged vlan ready
- vnic ready
- can use aggregates
- is ready for bandwidth management ...

... you get the idea and it's close to what dladm already shows us.

IHMO it would be very useful to get this all information instead of just 
getting the device name and collect by yourself the available features.

Detlef

On 04/23/08 05:29, Peter Memishian wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> As some of you may be aware, Clearview Nemo Unification and Vanity Naming
> integrated into Nevada build 83.  Among other advantages, the "vanity
> naming" feature allows us to finally[1] move away from the current chipset
> alphabet soup we have for network interface names, and instead standardize
> on simple names like net0/net1.  For more background, see:
> 
>       http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/clearview/uv/
>       http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/clearview/uv/howto
> 
> In Nevada, backward compatibility concerns have stopped us from changing
> the default naming convention, so one is still stuck with unintelligible
> names like e1000g2.  However, Indiana's experimental nature seems to make
> it an ideal vehicle for making such a change, and its target userbase
> seems suited for benefitting from such a change (e.g., networking
> procedures aimed at new adoptees could simply assume the first network
> interface is net0, rather than using placeholder interface names).
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> PS. Please note that device information is still available -- e.g.,
>     post-build-83, "dladm show-phys" will show the underlying device
>     (e.g. e1000g2) associated with each link.  Ongoing work (such as
>     NWAM's GUI) will likely provide detailed hardware information about
>     each network interface.
> 
> [1] This happened forever ago for other hardware like disks -- can one
>     imagine having /dev/seagate0 and /dev/maxtor1?  Yikes.
> 

-- 
Kind regards/ Mit freundlichem Gruss
Detlef Drewanz

Detlef Drewanz          Systems Engineer/OS Ambassador
Sun Microsystems GmbH   Phone: (+49 30) 747096 856
Komturstrasse 18a       mailto:detlef.drewanz at sun.com
D-12099 Berlin          http://blogs.sun.com/solarium
---
Sitz der Gesellschaft:Sun Microsystems GmbH, Sonnenallee 1, D-85551 
Kirchheim-Heimstetten
Amtsgericht Muenchen: HRB 161028
Geschaeftsfuehrer: Thomas Schroeder,Wolfgang Engels,Dr. Roland Boemer
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrates: Martin Haering

Reply via email to