Subject: Re: [PATCH] Use firmware provided index to register a network interface

From: Greg KH <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2010 09:33:36 -0700

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 09:20:57PM +0530, [email-masked] wrote:
> > Now trying to change the kernel namespace itself seems like a bad hack
> > around this fact.
> > 
> 
> The patch does not change the existing kernel name space.

You are "reordering it", right?

> It adheres to the existing ethN name space with IFNAMSIZ length
> requirements. The patch only makes sure that eth0 always corresponds
> to what is labeled as 'Gb1' on server chassis, on systems where SMBIOS
> type 41 record is available. And removes the need for any renames for
> the interfaces which have a firmware index assigned by system
> firmware, as the very first name assigned by the kernel will be as
> expected and deterministic.

And on systems with buggy firmware, what is going to happen here?  And
yes, there will be buggy BIOS tables, we can guarantee that, as this is
not something that Windows supports, right?

You are also complicating the logic for 99% of the world that will never
use this feature.  But I'll leave that up to the netdev developers to
decide, it's their code to maintain over time, not mine :)

thanks,

greg k-h