I'm getting a lot of pushback from Dell customers on our
linux-poweredge mailing list (thread starts [1]) that the choice of
name "lomX" is poor, due to HP's extensive use of LOM meaning Lights
Out Management, rather than my intended meaning of "LAN on
Motherboard". Gotta hate TLA collisions.
I think Sun (sorry, Oracle) push LOM for Lights-Out Management quite a lot -
calling their service processor an iLOM IIRC.
So, I'm open to new ideas for naming these. At LPC, Ted noted that
2- and 3-letter names are expected. "nic[1234]" or "en[1234]" ?
[...]
I would suggest avoiding "nic" since some people use "NIC" to mean
specifically an add-in card rather than LOM. In addition there is some
ambiguity with multi-port cards/controllers of whether NIC means a
controller or a port.
Other options for the prefix:
- "lan". Maybe too generic.
yes and no - that is the prefix for "ethernet" network interface names in HP-UX,
going back decades. so, there is precedent for that, and given the way HP-UX
device name persistence works, 99 times out of ten, the "built-in" or "core" LAN
interfaces ended-up being enumerated starting from zero - lan0, lan1, etc.
(There are exceptions relating to certain modles of systems and a full
re-install of the OS with add-on cards present but that is a story for another
thread).
- "mbe" = MotherBoard Ethernet. Looks a bit like "GbE" as some OEMs put
on the port labels.
Collides with Multi-Bit Error.
- "eom" = Ethernet On Motherboard
Collides with End of Message.
If there is indeed *no* way to get then named eth[1-N], and "lan" doesn't
resonate well-enough, then my contribution to the bikeshed would be "cor" simply
because I don't know the TLA with which that collides :)
Are folks sufficently confident that using anything other than "eth" won't cause
some unpleasant "our app always ass-u-me-d interfaces started with 'eth'"
situations?
rick jones
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