Garrett, On Wed, 2008-04-23 at 10:42 -0700, Garrett D'Amore wrote: > Seems like a good idea to me. > > The only caveat here is that I think it should remain possible to access > NICs by hardware driver name, if folks so choose (i.e. configure the > vanity names by default, but allow admins who are familiar with and may > prefer the hardware names -- for whatever reason -- to do so.)
That is not compatible with the design of the system. A datalink interface has a name (only one), and it's accessed by that name. One can view details of a physical datalink such as the device underneath by typing "dladm show-phys". One could rename a datalink back to a different name if they don't like the default name chosen by the system. > One goofy issue here is interface stability. I think part of the > problem is that we don't really know what the classification of Indiana > is for interface stability. It seems to fluctuate between a Minor and a > Major release. If its a Minor, then notification of changing names in > the release notes seems appropriate. I don't think that this is relevant. There is no upgrade path from a previous version of Solaris to Indiana. On a fresh install of Indiana, regardless of the release taxonomy of Indiana, I don't think there would be a problem using a naming scheme for network interfaces which is different from other releases of previous versions of Solaris. On upgrade from one Indiana release to another (or more specifically when updating the appropriate existing Indiana package), then I think preserving existing interface names would be desirable to not break already installed system and application configuration. > Perhaps one way to address the potential stability would be to submit a > possible "EOF notice" for "hardware names" indicating that the default > names of network devices in the future may change to net0... etc. (This > is really a release notes change for some future S10 update....) (That > may require Clearview be available in said S10 update, however.) What do changes in OpenSolaris have to do with Solaris 10? In any case, if Indiana has release notes, then it would certainly make sense to put something in there to familiarize Indiana users with new features, but I don't see how that is related to Solaris 10 or what the Clearview project decides to back-port in the future (if anything). -Seb
