Bug#1107187: trixie: document interface naming changes for i40e with 6.12 kernel

On Tue, 2025-06-03 at 07:56 +0100, Justin B Rye wrote:

> Ah, yes, "expected" in the same messed-up sense that this is the
> "predictable names" scheme.  But as your backports kernel shows, this
> isn't specifically a dist-upgrade issue; it's just one of those
> things
> all GNU/Linux admins ought to be warned about, in between "Backups!"
> and "Backups!"

yeah.  i originally found the issue when testing a new trixie install
on a host and confirmed it was kernel-specific w/the bookworm bpo
(sorry i didn't note that here).  but a lot more people stand to be
impacted by a dist-upgrade to trixie than the bpo kernel.  even after
the fact, grep'ing through the changelog i don't see anything re: i40e
and phys_port_name and i wouldn't have known its repercussions
beforehand if i had.

> However, we've already got another "predictable names" bugreport for
> the Trixie Release Notes involving QEMU (#1092176) so it might make
> sense to consolidate them into one reminder in the Release Notes.
> (Were the "similar bugs" similar NICs with similar symptoms?)

#1080975 was also i40e.  my bug #1105204 was grouped and closed
w/#1105223 though the latter was a result of the ID_NET_NAMING_SCHEME
version changing and not the driver feature set.

> Anyway, collecting information to go on the Wiki page: I gather this
> is an Intel Ethernet Connection X722, which is onboard on Lenovo
> ThinkSystem servers.  It does seem especially messed up that they're
> complicating ID_NET_NAME_ONBOARD, which was hitherto the only kind
> that users had a good chance of actually predicting...

yep, the cards i've noticed it on so far are Ethernet Connection X722
for 10GBASE-T (on a supermicro motherboard) and Ethernet Controller
XL710 for 40GbE QSFP+.  and yep, it's irritating that the policy for
the on-board naming schemes was really clear: on-board devices should
end in "o[[:digit:]]+" until suddenly it wasn't: "although a specific
naming scheme in udev is picked, the network card's name can still
change when a new kernel version adds a new sysfs attribute" (added
last year).

thank you!  i appreciate the sympathetic ear :)

  andy

-- 
andrew bezella <[email protected]>
internet archive