[systemd-devel] Udev won't rename interfaces that are already UP

[Giancarlo Razzolini]

On 19-02-2015 10:50, Tom Gundersen wrote:
>
> Won't work. Imagine you have two cards with the same driver. Now you
> are back to having to number the cards. And that is what open BSD
> does: numbers the cards based on probe order. The probe order is 
> nondeterministic so you are not guaranteed the same order and hence
> the same name on every boot.
>

I believe that this might have been the case in a remote past. But,
afaik, the current way is deterministic. I never ended up having name
switchs with the same driver for a very long time.

> In general any name that may be affected by other cards on the machine
> won't work as there is no way to know what cards will be present, nor
> the order in which they appear. So you can name your card based on
> properties of the card or properties of its parents, but that's about it.
>

I agree that other cards interference is undesired.

> We have infrastructure in the kernel for informing us that it already
> picked a good name, so if you come up with a nice kernel scheme you
> could indicate to us that we should back off. Please make it
> deterministic though...
It's not my intention, since I'm not a kernel nor systemd hacker. I can
read the code, possibly understand it and even perhaps make some minor
changes. But I don't believe I have the skill set for this kind of major
revamp. I was just reminiscing. Never mind.

Cheers,
Giancarlo Razzolini