[pve-devel] [PATCH manager/widget-toolkit 0/2] show altenative interface names in the web ui

[Dominik Csapak]

On 7/14/25 16:31, Thomas Lamprecht wrote:
> Am 14.07.25 um 15:53 schrieb Dominik Csapak:
>> On 7/14/25 15:49, Christoph Heiss wrote:
>>> Tested the series, came across two thing:
>>>
>>> Given e.g. the following interface:
>>>
>>>       11: ens8: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc [..]
>>> 	link/ether 01:02:03:04:05:06 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
>>> 	altname nic8
>>> 	altname enxdeadff02d073
>>>
>>> and the following /etc/network/interfaces snippet:
>>>
>>>       auto nic8
>>>       iface nic8 inet manual
>>>
>>> the interface will be displayed twice in the network page. If in the
>>> above snippet s/nic8/ens8/ is done (i.e. using the primary name), it
>>> works correctly.
>>>
>>> I guess between our /e/n/i parser and the altname mapping the interface
>>> is picked up twice, so this will need some sort of "de-duplication" in
>>> the backend, from what I can gather.
>>
>> yeah i don't touch the which interfaces will be shown, so
>> that's on the /e/n/i parser
> 
> Fwiw, it's not really wrong, one is the name in /e/n/i and the others
> are interface names per `ip link`, but it naturally can be a bit
> confusing as is.
> 
> Depends also a bit on what we want, i.e., it probably makes sense to always
> show the name used in the /e/n/i config in the name column, and always filter
> that out from the alternative names displayed, as that allows the easiest
> correlation to the /e/n/i config, which is the main source of true for this
> panel.
> The small downside for that is then that the Alternative Names column is not
> a 1:1 mapping of what `ip link` shows as altname, but that probably is not
> an actual issue, after all they all live in the same namespace and are
> interchangeable for usage with the iproute2 tools.
> But that might also mean that we have to treat duplicates explicitly here
> in the API call enhancing that info. Waiting until tomorrow makes sense in
> any way though, as Stefan will be back from his short vacation then and
> might have some input here.

i thought a bit about this, and I think there are some disadvantages when
just taking the names from /e/n/i:

* not sure if it would work at all (depends on ifupdown2), but some
   weird configs could make the ui even more confusing, e.g. (assuming nicX is an altname of nicY):

         auto nicX
         iface nicY inet manual


   we now would probably pick up both nicX and nicY, and show both in addition to what ip link says

* having any custom altname in the /e/n/i would require the computed/shown altnames to be
   calculated for *each*, so e.g. if i have
    nicX, nicY and nicZ all point to the same device, we'd have to make the altname list generation
   more complicated


IMHO it would be ok to always show the 'canonical' name (whatever ip link/kernel says)
in the 'name' column and everything else in the 'altname' column regardless what is
configured in /e/n/i


Disadvantage is of course that for some this might be more confusing as some will be
taking /e/n/i as a reference and not 'ip link'....


I don't think there is a good way to make it super clear for all situations/users, but in the end
we have to decide what is the 'ground truth' (i.e. either /e/n/i or 'ip link')