On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 4:29 AM, Peter Memishian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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.
I'm clearly in the minority here, but in what way is something anonymous like "net0" any more intelligible than "e1000g2"? I see no advantage here. I've been lumbered with this sort of random naming scheme elsewhere and it's a real PITA. > 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). So what determines the numbering scheme in a system with multiple interfaces (in particular, the order in which they're enumerated)? If I primarily use wireless, does that end up being net0? It seems to me that there's a fundamental weakness that needs to be addressed. If users are doing low level admin stuff that requires them to know the name of the device - even if that name is net0, then we've lost. On many systems they're still going to have to work out what the name of their network interface is (which of the net0 ... netX should they use?). And once you're down at that level, "friendly" names have no benefit. > 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. But why force users to go through those extra hoops? And why can't the admin interfaces be responsible for simplifying the user's life, rather than using underlying device names? > [1] This happened forever ago for other hardware like disks -- can one > imagine having /dev/seagate0 and /dev/maxtor1? Yikes. And you want to go back to sd0, sd1, etc? -- -Peter Tribble http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ indiana-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/indiana-discuss
