Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 13:27:49 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: ragnar@sysabend.org (Jamie Bowden) Cc: dot@dotat.at (Tony Finch), tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), res03db2@gte.net (Robert Clark), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Ideas about network interfaces. Message-ID: <200009281327.GAA27351@usr05.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.10.10009280434110.38318-100000@moo.sysabend.org> from "Jamie Bowden" at Sep 28, 2000 04:36:40 AM
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> :>> Would it make sense to have network device names abstracted > :>> one layer more? > :>> In other words, would it make it easier for new users, if all network > :>> drivers were mapped to something like et0? > :> > :>FWIW, for AIX, Linux, SVR4, Solaris, and other modern OSs, the > :>names are assigned sequentially, starting with en0, so as to > :>not require script or other configuration changes. > : > :IME Solaris, like FreeBSD, uses a different network device name for > :different drivers, e.g. le, hme, etc. > > Irix still uses different device names as well: I don't know if the Solaris in question is 2.7 or not; I know SunOS (BSD4.3 derived) used different names, but most Sun machines rendered this to "le0", "le1", ... "leN", due to the "wide availability" of non-Lance based cards. IRIX is an antique. In any case, neither one is a good argument for _not_ having standard interface names for 1..N interfaces, and the "en" prefix appears to be pretty widespread for this use. If nothing else, "en" based aliases could be providedm and if people wanted to name them explicitly instead, and have to hack up the interface names in all their scripts, they could still do that (if they were insane). I know that FreeBSD's semirandom naming caused me problems, when software that needed to be deployed on more rational systems contained shell scrips for getting the current IP address, which failed on FreeBSD, and the person who hacked them up for FreeBSD ended up temporarily breaking the deployment platform (out of the two, the deployment platform was a hell of a lot more important, since it could impact real customers). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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