[eudev] Can 70-persistent-net.rules be optional?

[eudev] Can 70-persistent-net.rules be optional?

[Walter Dnes]

  I'm not a C programmer, but I do have a laptop I can use for beta
testing.

  Regarding Richard Yao's statement about 70-persistent-net.rules; I can
see both sides of the issue, and some people are better off with and
some are better off without.

* In the Gentoo user forum, one item that achieved FAQ-level notoriety
was people who had installed a new network card complaining that it
didn't work in Gentoo when it worked fine in Windows.  The smarter ones
would run ifconfig and notice that they had eth0 and eth1.  They were
told to delete 70-persistent-net.rules, and they got their eth0 back.
Since the machines came up fine without 70-persistent-net.rules, and
70-persistent-net.rules seemed to be the cause of a lot of traffic on
the forum, many people probably submitted feature requests asking for
the removal of 70-persistent-net.rules, leading to its removal.

* The other side of the issue has people who have multi-card setups and
need things to come up in the same configuration the same every time.

  Here's a compromise idea that should satisfy both groups... have eudev
read and implement 70-persistent-net.rules, if it exists, just like it
did in the past.  But turn off the ability to *CREATE* a
70-persistent-net.rules file.  Have a separate script or binary run
manually by the admin to create it.  This way, the admins with
multi-card machines get their persistent rules, and users who don't
want/need it won't trip over it.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>

Re: [eudev] Can 70-persistent-net.rules be optional?

[Ian Stakenvicius]

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On 16/12/12 04:04 PM, Walter Dnes wrote:
> I'm not a C programmer, but I do have a laptop I can use for beta 
> testing.
> 
> Regarding Richard Yao's statement about 70-persistent-net.rules; I 
> can see both sides of the issue, and some people are better off 
> with and some are better off without.

Yes, it will be optional.  Udev-171 had:

(A) persistent-net-generator.rules (and their helpers) installed only
via USE='rule-generator' (ie, --with-rule-generator), which is how I
plan to manage it in eudev as well; and

(B) there was a way in udev.conf to disable (or actually skip)
generation of persistent-net.rules -- this was handled in the init
scripts and so I am unsure if it will be put back, but if the
sys-fs/udev maintainers see no issues with this code being put back
into the init scripts then we will ensure that works as well.

Since the USE flag will be off by default I expect the majority of
users will end up with the functionality they seem to want, which is
that nothing will create the persistent-net.rules but they can do so
by hand.
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