On 07/14/2017 08:01 PM, Russell Stuart wrote:
(b) Those who enter the debian device names manually into config
files, and have machines that network device names even though
no one armed with a screw driver has been near the thing.
These people would very much care. I was asking whether they
exist. So far I've seen person say they are one.
Then let me add myself to that list. I have a couple of firewall-routers at work, which have both onboard and PCI Ethernet cards. The onboard and PCI cards use chips from different companies, thus different drivers. So whether the first onboard port or the first PCI port becomes eth0 (according to the kernel) depends on which module loads/initializes first. That changes each boot. (Or at least it did last time I checked).
I think the same is true for the mid-tower at home that's my home server & firewall—I wanted more ports, so I added a card. So the kernel order will again depend on module load/init order.
However, the new fixed names don't matter to me—I've always set custom names (not just on these machines, but most machines with multiple NICs). I rename the interfaces things like "lan", "dmz", "comcast", "verizon", etc. depending on what's connected to the port.
OTOH, my laptop runs Network Manager. I don't really care what the interfaces are called there, or if they're stable. Though it's a slight pain when I need to troubleshoot something and am faced with a long USB WiFi adapter interface name. (Actually, I set up teaming in Network Manager, which seems to require stable names hard-coded in the JSON config field—so this isn't quite true any longer. But let's ignore this, as I presume it's either due to me missing something or a feature that isn't yet 100% done in Network Manager)