Domsch: Consistent Network Device Naming coming to Fedora 15

Hmm? Anyone taking care of large datacenters has a deployment and configuration management tool. Such tools take care of updating udev rules (and anything else) at installation time easily. Also, you deploy a server type *once* by hand, write down the cabling sequence needed for use by the physical assets management team, upload the variable data management scripts to the deployment tool database, and everything else is done based on these templates. You *KNOW* what cable needs to go in what NIC to get a deterministic installer to select the right NIC.

When changing a NIC requires updating a config file for a given operating system, this IS known beforehand, and it IS written in the hardware config change checklist. It may be annoying, but it doesn't result on servers that don't boot.

So no, whatever this is about, it is certainly not about datacenters, and certainly not about first boot (when keying to MAC doesn't hurt).

Keying to PCI slots is actually less troublesome when a NIC needs to be replaced, but that does assume the user will not shuffle PCI boards around. Datacenters don't, but they don't actually need this whole stuff, anyway. Desktop users do shuffle boards around, and I am not sure what happens in a small shop with a few servers, and a single junior sysadmin.

It will also subject people to the usual negligence and incompetence found on desktop BIOS teams. You *WILL* get desktop boards with "To Be Filled By OEM" in the slot names, or with repeated slot names, or with control characters inside of ASCII in the slot names, etc. I sure hope that biosdevname tool is extremely paranoid and has a fallback to do something smart when it comes across such insanity.