On Thu 24 Aug 2017 at 09:17:00 (-0400), The Wanderer wrote: > On 2017-08-24 at 07:52, to...@tuxteam.de wrote: > > > On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 01:11:27PM +0200, Hans wrote: > > > >> Hi folks, > > > >> I stumbled over the new network names (i.e. wl0p8 instead of wlan0), and > >> of > >> course I know, that this is obviously the newe standard (please correct > >> me, i > >> I am wrong). > > >> So, what is the status today? How have people accepted the new names also > >> for > >> long running systems? > > > > I'd say: if you have a box with a huge number of interfaces, or if your > > interface's hardware is brought up dynamically (picture a bunch of USB > > hubs with 16 eth interface adapters at its tips, to have something your > > phantasy can attach to), where the loading order of the corresponding > > kernel modules determine who is first and who is last, whoever is eth0 > > and whoever is eth15 may change from boot to boot. > > > > You don't want that, especially when those are attached to different > > networks (picture a firewall/router...) > > > > A similar case is when the interfaces come and go (e.g. plugging in and > > out said USB adapters. All this doesn't need to be USB -- in the more > > expensive world you can plug in (and out!) RAM and CPUs, while the > > system is running). > > > > Predictable names (try to) bring up the "same" interface with the "same" > > name each time (although "same" itself isn't well-defined; IMHO this > > makes a 100% job impossible anyway). > > However, I'll point out that machines with this many network interfaces > are *by far* the exception rather than the rule; indeed, even machines > with more than *one* interface each of wired and wireless are reasonably > rare. As such, the scenario in which this naming scheme makes interface > names more predictable is not one which most people will ever encounter. > (...which calls into question the appropriateness of making this scheme > the default.) > > To the best of my awareness, the rationale for calling this "predictable > network interface names" is that, on a single computer which has > multiple network interfaces of a given type, this naming scheme makes > it possible to predict *from one boot to the next* what the name of each > one will be. On such a computer, this is extremely valuable. > > By contrast, on a computer which has at most one interface of a given > type, this naming scheme provides - so far as I can tell - no advantage > at all. > > What's more, when working on *multiple* computers of that latter type, > this naming scheme makes it impossible to predict *from one computer to > the next* what the name of the sole available interface will be. > > As such, IMO this naming scheme makes network-interface names > significantly *less* predictable in the real-world scenario which is > most commonly encountered. > > On that basis and from that perspective, the choice of "predictable > network interface names" as the label for this naming scheme seems > downright Orwellian.
Running wheezy and jessie, the lspci output from this laptop included the lines 02:02.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5705 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 03) 02:04.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG [Calexico2] Network Connection (rev 05) so it was "predictable¹" that installing stretch would yield these: kernel: [ 111.443209] tg3 0000:02:02.0 enp2s2: renamed from eth0 kernel: [ 134.994910] ipw2200 0000:02:04.0 wlp2s4: renamed from eth0 in its syslog. In case the eth0 duplication perplexes you, the wireless card in squeeze, wheezy and jessie is called eth1. Don't ask me why. That *was* unpredictable AFAICT. ¹Predictability is based on the output of lspci, according to the page referenced earlier. Cheers, David.
