Re: Specifying names for tap interfaces

[Darren Reed <darrenr%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On 22/06/2012 12:33 AM, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:50:26PM +1000, Darren Reed wrote:
>> [...]
>> On 21/06/2012 6:05 PM, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
>>> You can use it with ifconfig, or any other tool. Just use
>>> '<keywork>:net0' instead of 'net0' as the name.
>>
>> Why would I want to ever use the altname when it just makes
>> the command string for ifconfig longer?
> 
> it'll be longer anyway, because the point of aliases (beside fixing
> xen problems) is to give meaningfull names. typing 'team-foo-dmz' will
> always be longer than 'wm0'. prefixing it with keywork: isn't a big
> deal.

So you want add a label to a network interface?

Sort of how we can label a disk?

>> On 21/06/2012 8:01 PM, Roger Pau Monne wrote:
>>> While this is true if you give a name to the interface on the config
>>> file, but how can the toolstack (xl, that launches Qemu) choose an
>>> interface name and pass it to Qemu when no one is specified? Well,
>>> we might be able to search for a free tap device and pass this as the
>>> desired name, but this is a really racy solution, as someone else might
>>> request a tap device while we are launching Qemu, and take our chosen
>>> tap device behind our back, so we will end up failing to create that
>>> domain.
>>>
>>> Also, I don't think there's anyway to create vifs interfaces with a
>>> specific name, which I think will also be an interesting feature to
>>> have.
>>
>> So in that second paragraph you've identified the real problem.
> 
> I dissagree that this is the real problem. There is a desired feature:
> being able to tag an interface with a user-provided string, and
> using this string instead of its name for various task. This is not
> restricted to xen xvif or tap devices, I have other use cases too
> (on a system with lots of interface, having a meaningfull string
> for them would be helpfull). But I don't think remplacing the actual
> interface name with a user-specified string is the way to go. This
> user-specified string should add information, not replace existing
> information.

I'm not sure that I follow what you're saying.

Can you please expand on that?

Darren