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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'>><i> Secondly, while as I said above I agree that enabling biosdevname<o:p></o:p></i></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'>><i> solves some problems, it seems likely that this change will cause<o:p></o:p></i></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'>><i> problems of its own. For example, any software that needs to know<o:p></o:p></i></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'>><i> about network interfaces (let's say it listens on a particular<o:p></o:p></i></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'>><i> interface) might well default to eth0; this will break on many<o:p></o:p></i></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'>><i> wireless-only systems and require manual configuration, but if it's<o:p></o:p></i></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'>><i> not the sort of thing that you use on a laptop, many users might<o:p></o:p></i></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'>><i> not previously have noticed. Using biosdevname by default would<o:p></o:p></i></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'>><i> extend these problems to many server-class machines out of the box.<o:p></o:p></i></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'>><i> While anything like this is certainly a bug already, with the new<o:p></o:p></i></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'>><i> scheme we'd *have* to fix everything like that and it'd be easy to<o:p></o:p></i></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'>><i> miss something. The question of whether you see this as an<o:p></o:p></i></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'>><i> opportunity to expose existing bugs or as a risk rather depends on <o:p></o:p></i></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'>><i> your point of view. :-)<o:p></o:p></i></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'>><i> <o:p></o:p></i></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><i><span style='color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></i></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'>So biosdevname is something that Dell would like to have working in 12.04, regardless of whether it is enabled by default or not or our systems. So we see solving any hard-coded eth names or race conditions as mandatory for 12.04. That said, we’re willing to take a crack at identifying (and hopefully solving) the potential problems so that this works correctly. We did this last year already with Fedora, so we should have a good idea where to look. We’re also willing to pitch in and help test to verify that this is working as well. <o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'>I don’t know the specific cutoff date by when the decision needs to be made as to when this would be enabled/disabled by default in the installer, but I would guess upfront testing and bug closure would be needed before a decision to enable would be made. <o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre style='background:white'><span style='color:black'> John<o:p></o:p></span></pre></div></body></html>