Re: devfs / eth micro-problems

From: James Sutherland (jas88@cam.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Aug 11 2000 - 17:01:30 EST


On 11 Aug 2000, Aaron Denney wrote:

> On Fri, 11 Aug 2000 16:02:39 -0400, Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
> > Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 05:03:07 +0200 (MET DST)
> > From: Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl
>
> > (ii) I noticed recently one some machine that the two
> > ethernet cards had interchanged names. And indeed,
> > if I am not mistaken the 2.4.0-test2 change to eth_setup
> > causes the familiar ether=0,0,eth1 boot parameter to
> > assign the eth1 name to the first detected card.
> > I am inclined to consider this a buglet -
> > it is a bit inconvenient if one has to test kernel version
> > in the boot scripts.
> >
> > I'd tend to agree. Can you say a bit more about the change to
> > eth_setup (not being familiar with that section of code).
>
> How about configuring IP address based on the MAC address of the card
> rather than what the kernel happens to name it?

Yep, that's fine - on machines where each card has a unique MAC address.
Some platforms have per-MACHINE MAC addresses instead, at which point your
idea falls flat on its face...

Rather than have one system for x86 and some platforms, and another for
Sun and others, it's better to stick with one system for all Linuxes,
IMHO. The allocation of interface numbers may be fairly arbitrary, but it
should be relatively constant across reboots, I think?

James.

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