Using any network interface whatsoever

[Bruce M Simpson]

Mike,

Tell me about it, I know exactly what you mean!

On Sat, Apr 08, 2006 at 06:53:11PM -0400, Mike Meyer wrote:
> My question about labels for ethernet devices wasn't meant to be
> rhetorical. Ethernet device names on Unix are pretty much
> worthless. They tell you basically nothing about which device you've
> got. On FreeBSD, different card types have different names, which is
> better than nothing - but that's about all it's better than. We need
> something akin to labels for ethernet devices. The LAN it's plugged
> into is the equivalent of the data on the disk - but there's no
> equivalent for the label.
> 
> What do I want for that? I identify ethernet boards by which slot on
> the back of the system I plug the cable into. Currently, I have to map
> that to board types to and which board is plugged into which slot to
> know which name to use. I want a name that tells me which slot I plug
> a cable in to plug it into that interface.

I investigated this problem when doing research on XORP. The behaviour
you describe is a functional requirement for a router chassis.

What it really comes down to is that one needs a PCI variant which supports
what's known as 'geographical addressing', and for FreeBSD's device / ifnet
framework to support naming cards according to the geographic i.e. physical
address.

If you look at the very bottom of the man page pci(9) you'll see I've
left a footnote about this.

Unfortunately the only systems which tend to implement this feature at
the moment are CompactPCI based chassis systems. Although there is support
for geographical addressing in a recent ACPI spec but as far as I know
it may only really have made its way into blade systems.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
BMS

P.S. If etiquette were taken more seriously then society as a whole might
function better -- I think of it as part of the 'operating system' of
the human spirit!