On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 12:23 AM, Greg KH [off-list ref] wrote:

On Fri, Oct 09, 2009 at 11:40:57PM -0500, Matt Domsch wrote:

quoted

The fundamental roadblock to this is that enumeration != naming,
except that it is for network devices, and we keep changing the
enumeration order.

No, the hardware changes the enumeration order, it places _no_
guarantees on what order stuff will be found in.  So this is not the
kernel changing, just to be clear.

Again, I have a machine here that likes to reorder PCI devices every 4th
or so boot times, and that's fine according to the PCI spec.  Yeah, it's
a crappy BIOS, but the manufacturer rightly pointed out that it is not
in violation of anything.

quoted

Today, port naming is completely nondeterministic.  If you have but
one NIC, there are few chances to get the name wrong (it'll be eth0).
If you have >1 NIC, chances increase to get it wrong.

That is why all distros name network devices based on the only
deterministic thing they have today, the MAC address.  I still fail to
see why you do not like this solution, it is honestly the only way to
properly name network devices in a sane manner.

All distros also provide a way to easily rename the network devices, to
place a specific name on a specific MAC address, so again, this should
all be solved already.

No matter how badly your BIOS teams mess up the PCI enumeration order :)

thanks,

greg k-h
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So when an add-in PCI NIC has a lower MAC than the motherboard NICs,
the add-in cards will come before the motherboard NICs.   i don't like it.

But please whatever is done, make sure ping and tracert still works when
telling it to use a ethX source interface:

eth0 = 4.3.2.8, the default gateway is thru eth1.
ping -I eth0 208.67.222.222              FAILS
ping -I 4.3.2.8 208.67.222.222          WORKS
tracert -i eth0 -I 208.67.222.222        FAILS
tracert -s 4.3.2.8 -I 208.67.222.222   WORKS
tracert -i eth0 208.67.222.222           FAILS
tracert -s 4.3.2.8 208.67.222.222      WORKS