interface renaming (was: Re: Moving towards NetworkManager)

Karl Auer kauer at biplane.com.au
Sat Jul 30 11:14:28 UTC 2016


On Sat, 2016-07-30 at 12:49 +0200, Josef Wolf wrote:
> But to add to the discussion: the trouble with the new naming scheme
> is not only for the average user. It also affects package maintainers
> and system administrators. For example: when you install snort, it
> defaults to eth0.

All non-trivial changes have side-effects and require things to be
adjusted and adapted to. They are *supposed* to make a difference.

Opinion is sometimes divided as to whether this or that change is for
the better, but I think in general there are enough bodies involved for
all sides to get a hearing if they want.

As to snort, I think a piece of security software should have a
slightly smarter install. It should warn the user if if the configured
interface does not exist. But it has to be said also that the user of a
piece of software like snort is presumably motivated to check this sort
of thing out themselves, too.

The problem of making assumptions about interface names is not new
(though I guess it's now more common). I had an old Thinkpad once that
for some reason I never understood came up with eth1 and wlan1 instead
of eth0 and wlan0. LOTS of stuff failed to install properly, and IMHO
all of those things that failed to install had inadequate install
scripts.

Maybe the move to predictable interface names will have a positive
side-effect - removing some unwarranted assumptions from install
scripts.

Regards, K.

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