On Thu, 27 Jun 2019 20:08:03 +0200
Michal Kubecek <mkube...@suse.cz> wrote:
> It often feels as a deficiency that unlike block devices where we can
> keep one name and create multiple symlinks based on different naming
> schemes, network devices can have only one name. There are aliases but
> AFAIK they are only used (and can be only used) for SNMP. IMHO this
> limitation is part of the mess that left us with so-called "predictable
> names" which are in practice neither persistent nor predictable.
>
> So perhaps we could introduce actual aliases (or altnames or whatever we
> would call them) for network devices that could be used to identify
> a network device whenever both kernel and userspace tool supports them.
> Old (and ancient) tools would have to use the one canonical name limited
> to current IFNAMSIZ, new tools would allow using any alias which could
> be longer.
>
> Michal
That is already there in current network model.
# ip li set dev eno1 alias 'Onboard Ethernet'
# ip li show dev eno1
2: eno1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP mode
DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
link/ether ac:1f:6b:74:38:c0 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
alias Onboard Ethernet
