Contents
Summary
Switch to the new network interface naming scheme available in systemd v197+ to ensure they are predictable.
Owner
- Name: Colin Guthrie
- Email: colin@mageia.org
Resources
- systemd maintainer, Colin Guthrie
- Upstream Systemd Documentation on Predictable Network Interface Names
Current status
- Targeted release: Mageia 4
- Last updated: 2013-01-21
- Percentage of completion: 0%
Detailed Description
Network device naming is a tricky business. udev used to have code to allow the renaming of network devices (typically keeping the ethN or wlanN naming scheme) as per user preferences regardless of the order in which the devices were detected. This code is racy and due to the way the kernel detects things it could easily rename something to "free" a desired name at the same time as another device sneaks in and claims it thus breaking the renaming logic.
This code was dropped from upstream udev, but was patched into Mageia 3 to allow for the legacy net name generator to work. As this is a racy system, we should switch to the more stable approach encouraged by upstream systemd.
Why it would be good for Mageia to include it
Avoids potential races and random failures to create devices with the expected names.
Test case
Simply boot and check what your network devices are named via ifconfig.
Software / Packages Dependencies
It will affect any package which assumes the naming convention on network devices.
What could disrupt development of this new feature
Various firewall software may need to be adapted to cope. Careful correction of firewall configs may be needed for upgrades (or upgrades could have the new feature disabled until the user manually enables it again).
Planning
See how it goes down in other distros.
Contingency
We would basically restore the dropped patch to allow udev to do the renaming again and mask/remove the udev rule which enables the new naming convention.
