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From: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel•org>
To: "Toke Høiland-Jørgensen" <toke@redhat•com>
Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft•net>,
	Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google•com>,
	Paolo Abeni <pabeni@redhat•com>, Simon Horman <horms@kernel•org>,
	netdev@vger•kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next] rtnetlink: Allow setting IFLA_PERM_ADDRESS at device creation time
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2025 06:37:10 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20250218063710.7e1ba2ab@kernel.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <874j0ro1pd.fsf@toke.dk>

On Tue, 18 Feb 2025 13:51:42 +0100 Toke Høiland-Jørgensen wrote:
> >> Hmm, and you don't see any value in being able to specify a permanent
> >> identifier for virtual devices? That bit was not just motivated
> >> reasoning on my part... :)  
> >
> > I can't think of any :( Specifying an address is already possible.  
> 
> Right, but the address can be changed later. Setting the perm_addr makes
> it possible for a management daemon to set a unique identifier at device
> creation time which is guaranteed to persist through any renames and
> address changes that other utilities may perform. That seems like a
> useful robustness feature that comes at a relatively low cost (the patch
> is fairly small and uncomplicated)?
> 
> > Permanent address is a property of the hardware platform.
> > Virtual devices OTOH are primarily used by containers, 
> > which are ephemeral by design. At least that's my mental model.  
> 
> Sure, any device feature that comes from hardware is only going to fit
> virtual devices by analogy. But I don't think the analogy here is super
> far fetched (cf the above)? :)

I'm not sure how to answer this. It all sounds really speculative
and disconnected with how I see virtual devices being used.

  reply	other threads:[~2025-02-18 14:37 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2025-02-13 13:45 [PATCH net-next] rtnetlink: Allow setting IFLA_PERM_ADDRESS at device creation time Toke Høiland-Jørgensen
2025-02-13 15:40 ` Jakub Kicinski
2025-02-13 16:13   ` Toke Høiland-Jørgensen
2025-02-17 17:51     ` Jakub Kicinski
2025-02-18 12:51       ` Toke Høiland-Jørgensen
2025-02-18 14:37         ` Jakub Kicinski [this message]
2025-02-18 20:14           ` Toke Høiland-Jørgensen

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