Bug 471253

Summary: yast: remove interface alias
Product: [openSUSE] openSUSE 11.4 Reporter: Jan Engelhardt <jengelh>
Component: NetworkAssignee: Michal Zugec <mzugec>
Status: RESOLVED INVALID QA Contact: E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity: Normal    
Priority: P5 - None CC: mantel, mt, mvidner
Version: Factory   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Found By: Beta-Customer Services Priority:
Business Priority: Blocker: ---
Marketing QA Status: --- IT Deployment: ---
Attachments: first step change

Description Jan Engelhardt 2009-01-31 03:25:08 UTC 
Aliases are terribly confusing, users attempt to do bad stuff with them like trying to feed them to various programs like iptables and such. Let's just remove that from yast; the runlevel/network scripts used in opensuse can cope perfectly fine with it.
Comment 1 Jan Engelhardt 2009-01-31 03:26:44 UTC 
Created attachment 269061 [details]
first step change

Maybe more is needed, but this seems like that first thing that's gonna be needed. Now yast also needs to be instructed not to emit LABEL_ lines for /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-xyz if this patch does not already imply that. YCP is an absolute mystery language so far.
Comment 2 Michal Zugec 2009-02-23 13:14:01 UTC 
Marius, what's your opinion about alias labels?
Comment 3 Marius Tomaschewski 2009-02-24 10:10:33 UTC 
I agree that we shouldn't "promote them" in any way -- it is legacy code
to preserve compatibility with Linux-2.0 net aliases.

But I don't know if it makes sense to remove the support from yast2 or
not. I think, it makes more sense to say the people, that they are
legacy code.

A better way would be IMO to display a "legacy code" warning before every
save when labels are in use... But please: let the user enough time to
read what's about, but close the popup box automatically after some time
and continue.

I've adopted the "ifcfg" manual page in svn to make it clear:
"[...]
      LABEL[suffix]
              Each IPv4 address may be tagged with a label string in order  to
              preserve  compatibility  with Linux-2.0 net aliases. This string
              must coincide with the name of the interface or must be prefixed
              with the interface name followed by colon.
              Labels are ignored for IPv6 addresses.
              Note: Labels and ifconfig are legacy code and should not be used
              any more. The resulting "alias" interfaces are not  true  inter-
              faces  and  can't  be  used  e.g. in firewall scripts. The total
              length of interface name (inclusive of the colon and  label)  is
              limited to 15 characters and the obsolete ifconfig utility trun-
              cates it after 9 characters.
              See also Multiple addresses (see below).
 [...]
   Multiple addresses
       You  can  extend  the  variable name IPADDR by any string you like. For
       example IPADDR_1, IPADDR-FOO or IPADDRxxx.   Use  these  variables  for
       your  IP  addresses.   If you need some additional parameters for these
       addresses, then just add the same extension to  these  variable  names:
       BROADCAST, NETMASK, PREFIXLEN, REMOTE_IPADDR, LABEL, SCOPE, IP_OPTIONS.

       Example:
          IPADDR=10.10.0.1/16
          IPADDR_1=10.10.1.1
          NETMASK_1=255.255.0.0
          BROADCAST_1=10.10.255.255
          IPADDR_2=10.10.2.1/16
          IPADDR_3=10.10.3.1/16
          IPADDR_6=2001:DB8:BEEF::1/64
          ... and so on ...

       You  do  not need to set labels for any address. Please use the ip com-
       mand (ip addr show) to manage interface addresses instead of the  obso-
       lete ifconfig command. If you want to use ifconfig and label, then omit
       the label for your main address and use a number  as  label  for  every
       additional address.
 [...]"

OK? Feedback to improve manual pages is always welcome!
Comment 4 Michal Zugec 2009-02-24 17:28:49 UTC 
fixed in yast2-2.18.12, yast2-network-2.18.12
I'll add there some text about legacy labels before closing bug
Comment 5 Michal Zugec 2009-03-02 14:41:36 UTC 
added help text
Comment 6 Michal Zugec 2009-04-23 10:33:35 UTC 
*** Bug 495142 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 7 Jan Engelhardt 2010-09-19 14:45:43 UTC 
Reopening to reconsider removing the label field from yast2-network.
Comment 8 Hubert Mantel 2010-12-07 13:01:14 UTC 
Michael, decide yourself on about when to close this bug.
Comment 9 Michal Zugec 2010-12-07 13:39:52 UTC 
I don't see any reason to remove functionality customers are using.
Comment 10 Jan Engelhardt 2010-12-07 13:42:11 UTC 
Uh this provides no additional functionality.
Comment 11 Michal Zugec 2010-12-08 10:52:13 UTC 
YaST just reflects sysconfig settings. And this should be backward compatible (because of AutoYaST for example). Removing backward compatibility brings more problems that it solve.