On Fri, Jun 28, 2019 at 01:12:16PM +0200, Jiri Pirko wrote: > > I think that it is desired for kernel to work with "real alias" as a > handle. Userspace could either pass ifindex, IFLA_NAME or "real alias". > Userspace mapping like you did here might be perhaps okay for iproute2, > but I think that we need something and easy to use for all. > > Let's call it "altname". Get would return: > > IFLA_NAME eth0 > IFLA_ALT_NAME_LIST > IFLA_ALT_NAME eth0 > IFLA_ALT_NAME somethingelse > IFLA_ALT_NAME somenamethatisreallylong > > then userspace would pass with a request (get/set/del): > IFLA_ALT_NAME eth0/somethingelse/somenamethatisreallylong > or > IFLA_NAME eth0 if it is talking with older kernel > > Then following would do exactly the same: > ip link set eth0 addr 11:22:33:44:55:66 > ip link set somethingelse addr 11:22:33:44:55:66 > ip link set somenamethatisreallylong addr 11:22:33:44:55:66
Yes, this sounds nice. > We would have to figure out the iproute2 iface to add/del altnames: > ip link add eth0 altname somethingelse > ip link del eth0 altname somethingelse > this might be also: > ip link del somethingelse altname somethingelse This would be a bit confusing, IMHO, as so far ip link add $name ... always means we want to add or delete new device $name which would not be the case here. How about the other way around: ip link add somethingelse altname_for eth0 (preferrably with a better keyword than "altname_for" :-) ). Or maybe ip altname add somethingelse dev eth0 ip altname del somethingelse dev eth0 Michal
