Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

sm-discuss - Re: [SM-Discuss] netconf MAC setting change

sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Public SourceMage Discussion List

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Juuso Alasuutari <iuso AT sourcemage.org>
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] netconf MAC setting change
  • Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 17:11:19 +0300

Getting back to this issue with some updates.

As you've probably noticed, netconf and udev now both do interface renaming
based on DEVICE_MAC. This is certainly an improvement over the horrible mess
I made using the MAC spoof field...

While binding to the mac address is not a perfect solution, I believe this
thread's discussion has shown that neither is any other approach. The mac is
a kind of "industry standard" when it comes to how distros generally solve
persistent interface naming. We can at least try to make it as smooth as
possible.

At the moment it's up to the user to fill in DEVICE_MAC if he/she wants to
bind interfaces. I'd like to see interface binding as a standard feature
(this is _strictly_ IMHO, mind you). We could anyway round the edges a
little. Maybe netconf could suggest to fill it in automatically (reading
from /sys/class/net/<if>/address), or possibly even fill it in automatically
during 'Add new device' (this might be risky).

As to what we should do with the MAC spoof option, my opinion's tilting
towards removing it for now. But I'd also be happy to try implementing
something like Seth suggested, where the native MAC is saved as persistent
value during boot(?), and used for comparison later on instead
of /sys/class/net/<if>/address. That would solve some problems, although as
already stated it would leave the rogue spoofers own their own.

Commenting on issue #2 below, I'm happy to announce that the problem of
renaming interfaces with existing names is (most probably) solved with a
patch I applied to the udev spell today. I got it from udev and debian
devolper Marco d'Itri. His solution modifies udev_device.c to wait until
other interfaces are renamed to avoid conflicts. It is used in the debian
unstable udev package, and will probably be implemented in mainstream udev
soon.

So, if anyone previously tried and failed to cross-rename eth0->eth1 and
eth1->eth0 during boot, please cast the latest udev spell and try again. (If
you don't have git access you'll have to wait for the next test tarball; I
submitted the patch less than an hour ago.)

On Tuesday 20 June 2006 10:06, Pieter Lenaerts wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 18, 2006 at 12:14:29PM +0200, Thomas Orgis wrote:
> > My conclusion: The device renaming to eth0/1 fails because there is
> > already a device present with that name (since kernel brought up both
> > drivers before the udev rules for sysconfig are executed).
>
> there's two things to do if we want to make this robust:
>
> 1. netconf should let the user select the right device_mac for the right
> nic from /sys info combined with lspci info if available. netconf is
> supposed to hide all ifconfig or udev complexity for the user.
>
> 2. mac2name has to become intelligent in its renaming tactics so that it
> supports renaming and mac changes at any time in all directions.
> this will require tests for it to find out the current state, the way to
> get to target state and (optional) triggering of udevstart at changes in
> device configs.

--
Juuso Alasuutari
[[ Source Mage GNU/Linux ]]

Attachment: pgpupF6Pdjq6d.pgp
Description: PGP signature




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page