> From: Chris Adams <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: Consistent Network Device Naming for LOMs coming... > To: [email protected] > Message-ID: <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > Once upon a time, Sean Dilda <[email protected]> said: > > I can't remember the last box I setup with non-onboard NICs. As such, I > > think naming the on-board NICs differently from PCI NICs is just going > > to lead to needless confusion. > > <aol>me too</aol> > > Under some OSes, ethernet device names vary depending on the driver and > such, but Linux has always named all wired ethernet devices "ethX". > Some wireless get different names, but I can't remember running into any > wired devices being anything other than ethX. It is rather late in the > game to change that.
As someone that (almost) always builds boxes w/ non-onboard NICs, I have a different perspective. We build a ton of Oracle RAC clusters, frequently with iSCSI/EQL storage. So we always have a min of 6 NICs, sometimes up to 12 NICs. The install image presents a pop-up list of NICs, from which you must hunt and peck to find your desired NIC (first on-board NIC). Engineers that very frequently image servers remember how the initial install image mis-enumerates for each server model. For instance, a R710 with two Intel daughter boards mis-enumerates the first on-board NIC consistently as eth6. So they know to pick "eth6" on this initial popup list when imaging a R710. For the rest of us (that image infrequently), we just have to hunt and peck. Sometimes, you can eliminate a few of the NICs presented. For instance, if you know the on-boards are Broadcomms on this server model, you can eliminate the Intel NIC choices. (So you still hunt and peck, but through a smaller field.) If Matt can consistently enumerate the on-board NICs, this would be huge!! We know we *always* want the lowest numbered on-board NIC. If it's named something different than the non-onboard NICs, that would make the menu selection trivial. After the initial imaging, we frankly don't care -- as our post-install scripts write the std (mac-addr based) udev "persistence naming" rules. To consistently enumerate the NICs the way we want anyway. (We may continue to call the first on-board NIC "eth0" so our support personnel isn't confused.) It's only on the initial boot image of the initial install, that we don't have control over. (Unless we crack over the vendor-supplied boot image, which we don't want to do -- we'll lose OS support). So I think this is a great solution to a sorely-needed problem! It can be called ethomX, ethmX, methX. Don't care. To me, LOMx is slightly confusing, but for a different reason. The Dell blade h/w docs refer to the on-boards as LOM0, LOM1, ... So if we have lom1 interface running on h/w interface LOM0, that's slightly confusing. (I'd take it if it gave me consistent on-board NIC enumeration, however.) Spike White Dell I/T [email protected] _______________________________________________ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list [email protected] https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
