David Brownell ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) said:
I distinctly recall them being in sysfs *somewhere*; since I'm not booted into 2.5 at the moment, I don't remember the exact location.
Let me know if you find them somewhere. The original notion was that they'd be the sysfs bus_id values. Although sysfs does expose physical paths, their identifiers are not "stable".
For any device X-Y in /sys/bus/usb/devices, it appears X-Y:Z/name gives either "Hub", or "usb_make_path() interface Z".
Or whatever that interface's iInterface string provides, or that interface's driver puts there. Those are purely descriptive strings, ideally meant to be read by users, and they're not to be interpreted by programs.
(I think the first versions of sysfs used a constant string with value "what goes here??", or similar. As it stands now, that "user-meaningful" information is about as meaningful as we can make it.)
(Any more than "ethN" identifiers are: they depend on the order in which devices are initialized.)
That's easily enough fixed, though, for ethernet devices.
Using, as I pointed out, something like "nameif"; or like "ip link ethN set name=newname" ... "nameif" would seem to address the issue you said you'd set out to solve. Though I don't seem to recall any major distros had started to use it.
Why do you want that cross-referencing? Other than the pure intellectual challenge, of course ... :)
For keeping track of devices; rather than have one list of network hardware addresses, and one list of usb/pci/pcmcia/etc network devices, it's better to have one list that just has the network hardware address associated with the proper device.
That "one list" is what "nameif" uses: one of all ethernet addresses paired with the link names ("ethN" etc) that some sysadmin said they're supposed to be using.
And no cross-referencing between layers that, by design, are insulated from eacy other ... and remember that not only may "usbfs" not be present, at some point lots of folk hope it will NOT be. It needs replacing; don't build in assumptions that it'll be there forever.
Not all network links are "ethN", and many don't even have stable Ethernet addresses -- so "nameif" and similar tools can't always help.
What devices don't have stable ethernet addresses? PtP links/cables, or something else?
Certainly the USB host-to-host link cables, by vendors like LapLink, Belkin, and many more, don't include ID proms to give stable link addresses.
And I've seen other drivers use the "locally assigned" quarter of the Ethernet address space; it's certainly a much better option than using a compiled-in address and makeing all instances of a product use the same Ethernet address.
- Dave
------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email sponsored by: Free pre-built ASP.NET sites including Data Reports, E-commerce, Portals, and Forums are available now. Download today and enter to win an XBOX or Visual Studio .NET. http://aspnet.click-url.com/go/psa00100006ave/direct;at.asp_061203_01/01 _______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, use the last form field at: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-usb-devel
