* Jon Masters [off-list ref] 2008-05-23 15:06

My intention is to also allow for:

ifcfg-slot_<whatever>

Where the configuration is based entirely upon what vendor <XYZ> says is
the first, second, or third card. Then, those who want to use the older
names can continue to do so, but those who prefer to base their
configuration upon the order the vendor states, can do so.

I'd propose to extend the netlink configuration interface, f.e. introduce a
new netlink attribtue IFLA_SLOT which can be provided to select the device
to be changed based on the slot number instead of the name/ifindex. That
would also make it trivial to write a small app using RTM_GETLINK to
translate a slot number to the corresponding interface name.