Bug#868002: udev: README.Debian interface naming improvements

[Christoph Anton Mitterer]

Package: udev
Version: 233-10
Severity: wishlist


Hi.

Some possible improvements:


1)
README.Debian, mentions:
/lib/systemd/network/01-mac-for-usb.link
however this seems to no longer exist.


2)
Also it mentions "on VMs remove the file /etc/udev/rules.d/80-net-setup-link.rules instead".

Is this still up to date? I've checked a number of legacy installations (i.e. such that had
/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules), with different KVM and VMware and non of them had
such file generated.


3) As for the "new" stable interface naming.
While I've never observed any real issues with the old way of doing it, I see the points why
this was done and don't really care on the name of the my interfaces.

There is however at least one scneario, where the new path-based naming makes troubles:

If I take my large computing and storage clusters at the university, it doesn't really happen
that often that a network card breaks, is replaced (at the same location) and then things
work out of the box, without having to change the MAC in some udev rule.
Actually the bigger server vendors seem to send you replacements with the same MACs than one
had before.

What I do however have is many bunches of nodes from different vendors or different generations
in which the position is different, and thus I get different names.
I do however want to have the primary network card have the same name accross the whole cluster
(whether it's eth0 or foobar), which brings one back to the MAC based way of naming, I guess,
especially since these servers all typically have n NICs ... e.g. 2 "good" 10 GbEs and 4 on-board
1GbEs.

Now README.Debian already gives example how to do that with an udev rule... even as "first" way,
but it gives no example on doing it the systemd-way, which is AFAIU with a .link file, isn't it?

So perhaps for the custom naming, tell people how they can convert their old
70-persistent-net.rule to a .link file first (before the udev way) andgive an example like:
[Match]
MACAddress=11:22:aa:bb:cc:33

[Link]
Name=eth0

Which, AFAIU, is the intended way of doing it?


Cheers,
Chris.