[systemd-devel] Request for Feedback on Design Issue with Systemd and "Consistent Network Device Naming"

[Lennart Poettering]

On Mi, 21.04.21 10:13, Simon Foley (simon at simonfoley.net) wrote:

> The issue is around the depreciation of the support for the HWADDR= argument
> in the ifcfg files (RHEL, other distros are available).

systemd upstream is not involved in that. ifcfg is specific to Red Hat
distributions and systemd doesn't mandate the concept to be
deprecated. It doesn't support them natively, but there's no need to.

The .link concept systemd provides is more powerful and works across
distributions. You can use that to name your interfaces by MAC
address, it's very well supported.

> How HPC architects try to help sysadmins and application teams in the
> process is to have post build modifications.
> Here we can use the HWADDR= variable in the ifcfg-[device name] files to
> move a *specific* device name to these targeted NIC cards and ports.

systemd doesn't stop you to.

It provides a more generic way to do this via .link files, but from
systemd's PoV you don#t have to migrate, if you don't want.

You could easily write a conversion script btw, that takes your ifcfg
files and converts them to .link files in /run, if you like.

> It would appear in RHEL8 that due to systemd the HWADDR= is no longer
> supported and we have lost this fundamentally important feature.

If RHEL deprecated this, that's a decision by RHEL, and the upstream
systemd project does not mandate anything in this area. It provides a
generic mechanism to do the same, but you can use whatever you want.

Anyway, the upstream systemd project is the wrong forum to discuss any
of this. You are apparently upset by a RHEL decision. While I
sympathize with the decision, it's not a decision the systemd project
took, but RHEL did, and technically nothing in systemd mandates
this.

Lennart

--
Lennart Poettering, Berlin