Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758511Ab0GIRPd (ORCPT ); Fri, 9 Jul 2010 13:15:33 -0400 Received: from ausc60ps301.us.dell.com ([143.166.148.206]:64523 "EHLO ausc60ps301.us.dell.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1758213Ab0GIRPb (ORCPT ); Fri, 9 Jul 2010 13:15:31 -0400 X-Loopcount0: from 143.166.82.43 Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 12:15:29 -0500 From: Matt Domsch To: "Loke, Chetan" Cc: Florian Weimer , linux-net@vger.kernel.org, Michael Di Domenico , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, kay.sievers@vrfy.org Subject: Re: nic enumeration Message-ID: <20100709171529.GA27241@auslistsprd01.us.dell.com> References: <82tyo9i0n2.fsf@mid.bfk.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.11 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1831 Lines: 43 On Fri, Jul 09, 2010 at 12:27:53PM -0400, Loke, Chetan wrote: > Ok, no renaming, I would like a reference. And symlink just doesn't work > w/ the udevadm trigger business. We've tried that already. > > What needs to be changed in udev etc to create a soft link? Any place > where I should start digging and gotchas to lookout for? Unlike disks which have /dev/disk/by-{id,path,uuid}/* symlinks back to /dev/sd*, which udev manages, network devices have no such on-disk representation for udev to manage. My proposal to create such on-disk mappings was shot down, as was my suggestion to create (multiple) network device symlinks/references/aliases inside the kernel. The approach I'm pursuing now is called libnetdevname[1], which can take as input a device name from various name spaces (BIOS-provided from SMBIOS or in future, ACPI, or perhaps a userspace mapping similar to /etc/mactab in concept), and which as output is the single kernel name for a device. Once plumbed into the tools that manipulate network devices, it would allow you to do: # ip addr add xx.xx.xx.xx dev Embedded_NIC_1 and have "Embedded_NIC_1" map to the appropriate "ethN", for use by the calls into the kernel. In this case, Embedded_NIC_1 would come from BIOS; conceivably other namespace sources could hook into this same framework then. FWIW, I have a talk at LinuxCon Boston coming up on this, and have a proposal in for Linux Plumbers Conference as well. Thanks, Matt [1] http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Oss/libnetdevname -- Matt Domsch Technology Strategist Dell | Office of the CTO -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/