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

[Thomas Lamprecht]

Am 15.07.25 um 09:41 schrieb Dominik Csapak:
> On 7/14/25 16:31, Thomas Lamprecht wrote:
>> 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

Just test it? I'd like to avoid theoretical conversations, this can be
already confusing enough without that. In anyway, we can normalize that
on serialization and it's a edge case the user had to manually cause
themselves, so would not bother to much at all with this case.

> 
> * having any custom altname in the /e/n/i would require the computed/shown altnames to be

What does "custom altname" mean?

>    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

There is no real canonical name, there's a legacy name that might be
called primary one, but as one can use the others transparently for it
we really must not think to much into that terminology, it's as first
class as the other names.

> 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'....

Yeah, and ip link shows all names, /e/n/i has normally just the one
name, so one can easily map any /e/n/i variant to ip link but not vice
versa.

> 
> 
> 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')

Writing this I'm a bit more certain about:

"iface" entries are our source of truth and the name from POV of the API
and UI, outdated "auto" statements can be fixed on serialization and also
normalized on parsing, they can only stem from manual editing and are not
a real issue.
All other names pointing to the same interface should be picked up as
alternative names.

And if we want to highlight the primary name ip link shows, this could be
done either inline in the UI, or through by placing it in a dedicated
column. Both could be followed up on depending on the user feedback we get,
so I do not think we need to decide that now.

The /e/n/i config always was the source for the network config view–which
isn't a network status view–so that should IMO really stick with /e/n/i as
prime source of truth.

Seeing status of all interfaces  including statistics and the like might be
nice, but that probably is handled as new API and component, potentially
even a cluster wide one. There we could then make iproute2/kernel the primary
source of truth, and only show any config name a interface is used as.
 But I'd not think about this to much for the transparent altname support.