[pve-devel] [PATCH] run-env: fallback to all zero mac for interfaces without

[Christoph Heiss]

On Fri Jul 11, 2025 at 11:14 AM CEST, Thomas Lamprecht wrote:
> Am 11.07.25 um 10:27 schrieb Gabriel Goller:
[..]
>> To be honest I'd rather filter out this interface. A zeroed out mac is
>> reserved for loopback interfaces and usually isn't routed.
>
> It's not like we set the MAC to zero, rather it's just used for displaying.
> This way an admin can at least see the interface and select it for usage,
> even if they then need to correctly configure it manually after installation
> to make it actually work.
>
> That said, as manual intervention is required either way, filtering out
> might be OK, but your arguments here are IMO not justifying why that route
> should be chosen. FWIW, a third alternative might be that the rust
> implementation might also just have to learn to not expect a MAC...

FWIW, there's also been a Bugzilla report a few days about this problem
[0].

I've took a cursory glance at going about the third route here, although
didn't really get to write much code due to other, more pressing things.

If anyone wants to pick that up, short summary w.r.t the Rust part:

- It's mostly about doing a `String` -> `Option<String>` conversion for
  `proxmox_installer_common::setup::Interface`, the MAC address from
  that is then only ever used the post-hook.
- There's also `proxmox_auto_installer::sysinfo::NetdevWithMac`, which
  tries to read the MAC address from /sys/class/net.

[0] https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=6508