original interface name? (5.*)

Brooks Davis brooks at one-eyed-alien.net
Fri Sep 10 12:58:20 PDT 2004


On Fri, Sep 10, 2004 at 10:46:42PM +0300, Valentin Nechayev wrote:
>  Fri, Sep 10, 2004 at 21:30:11, max wrote about "Re: original interface name? (5.*)": 
> 
> >> Hi,
> >> is there a stable way to determine original interface name (before
> >> any renaming) in 5.3? I.e. as driver + sequence number?
> > From inside the kernel you can use ifnet.if_dname + ifnet.if_dunit, from the 
> > userland I don't know if it's possible to get a look at those fields.
> > In any way, I suggest not to do that. ifnet.if_xname is supposed to be *the* 
> > name of the interface. There is no such thing as "original name".
> Having driver name one can determine essential capabilities of the interface,
> including VLAN support, possibility and allowed style of media specification,
> etc.

The output of ifconfig -m contains this information.

> Device number among with driver name are enough to determine needed
> information based on driver information and boot logs.
> It is pointless to use interface without such information, and it is pointless
> to do manual logging as the only source.

This is a better reason, but if you want the logs to make sense, you
will have to be aware of changes.  Hmm, we may want to log(9) renames.

I'm considering adding an ifconfig -v option that would imply -m and add
more details like index, epoch, dname, dunit, etc.

-- Brooks

-- 
Any statement of the form "X is the one, true Y" is FALSE.
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