This isn't a simple problem at all. The new naming scheme from systemd makes it so that these specific devices (USB dongles) get their MAC address encoded in the device name, which brings it up to a length of 15 characters + \0; so 16 bytes. This happens to also be the size limit for interface names (set as IFNAMSIZ to 16). Adding more characters to the end of this string makes it too long to be allowed by {libnl3, kernel, iproute2}. This is because while we're not strictly dealing with interface names here, we're dealing with a label which is bound by the same sized buffer (limited to IFNAMSIZ size).
There are a few possible avenues for a solution: - Rename the address yourself to something smaller. This should be possible using udev rules. - Fix systemd to pick a different naming method. - Fix ip addr to better deal with address labels, which may mean dropping some backward compatibility (more below) - Increasing the buffer size for address labels (which means changes in the kernel, libnl, iproute2 at the very least, and probably many more userland utilities). For iproute2: label LABEL Each address may be tagged with a label string. In order to preserve compatibility with Linux-2.0 net aliases, this string must coincide with the name of the device or must be prefixed with the device name followed by colon. It may be possible to strip out anything before the colon if a label is passed in that format to hand to the netlink layer a shorter label, but I haven't looked more closely at what such a change might impact. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to iproute2 in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1567744 Title: RTNETLINK answers: Numerical result out of range for alias interface from a usb NIC Status in iproute2 package in Ubuntu: Incomplete Bug description: I have a USB NIC that is connected to my denial system. I tried to create an alias, and after reboot, it wasn't created. When I manually try to bring it up I have the error. /e/n/i: auto enx000ec688b79f iface enx000ec688b79f inet static address 10.90.90.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 auto enx000ec688b79f:1 iface enx000ec688b79f:1 inet static address 192.168.100.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 ubuntu@maas00:~$ sudo ifup enx000ec688b79f ubuntu@maas00:~$ sudo ifup enx000ec688b79f:1 RTNETLINK answers: Numerical result out of range Failed to bring up enx000ec688b79f:1. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/iproute2/+bug/1567744/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp