Re: [RFC] Stable interface index option

Anno domini 2015 Hannes Frederic Sowa scripsit:

On Tue, Dec 1, 2015, at 16:50, Maximilian Wilhelm wrote:

quoted

quoted

I'm not sure I understand how this would work- are we going to 
pin down the ifindex for some subset of interfaces?

I'm not sure what your idea is, but I guess we might mean the same
thing:

What I have in mind is that the user can supply a list of (ifname ->
ifindex) entries via a sysfs/procfs interface and if such a list is
present, the kernel will search the list for every ifname which is
registered and check if there is an entry. If there is, the ifindex
for this entry is used. If there is no entry found for the given
ifname, the usual algorithm is used (therefore inherently providing
backward compatibility).

Sorry to ask because I don't like this feature at all. There was a lot
of work on stable interface names. Why do you need stable ifindexes,
which were never meant to be stable for a longer amount of time?

As described in my first mail, there currently is a real-world problem
with snmp based monitoring of linux network devices. As snmp is the de
facto standard for monitoring of network devices this presents a
problem when working with the according tools (traffic graphs aren't
accurent or have to be changed manually on daily basis, weathermaps
aren't correct like show to few traffic or the "wrong" one, etc.)

So this is the most simple and most generic approach to fix this
problem.

What's the reason you don't like this feature at all?

Best
Max
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