The network isn't very virtual under Linux [LWN.net]

The network isn't very virtual under Linux

Posted Sep 4, 2008 20:01 UTC (Thu) by renox (subscriber, #23785)
Parent article: Sysfs and namespaces

At work for various reason, I needed to change the VLAN tag used on one board, but the name of the virtual interface in Linux is eth0.<tag> which means that every part of our software which stored the name of the interface had to be modified: not good.

I asked if it was possible to create virtual interfaces with a 'logical name' independently of the value of the tag, but this isn't possible..

Oh well, at least Linux isn't naming the interfaces by the name of the HW maker as *BSD do I think, otherwise it'd be even worse..

(Log in to post comments)

The network isn't very virtual under Linux

Posted Sep 4, 2008 20:21 UTC (Thu) by ebiederm (subscriber, #35028) [Link]

ip link set eth0.tag name something_fixed

Hard coding your interface names in general is a bad idea
but linux can very much rename network interfaces allowing
you to give them a logical name.

Eric