[pve-devel] [PATCH installer 00/14] support network interface name pinning

[Christoph Heiss]

On Tue Oct 21, 2025 at 4:04 PM CEST, Michael Köppl wrote:
> Tested this in both the GUI and TUI installers and the autoinstaller.
> Tried the following:
>
> - Pinning names for multiple interfaces
> - Pinning names for interface with invalid MAC in autoinstaller
>     Noticed that in this case, the default of nic0 is used since the map
>     from MACs to interface names is pre-populated with the default
>     values. So if I use a MAC address in my answer file that does not
>     exist, the interface name for any interface not mentioned in the
>     answer file will be set to nic0, since if
>     network.interface-name-pinning.enabled is set to true, the pinning
>     is done in any case. I suppose this is on purpose, since there's no
>     way to check for the existence of the MAC address beforehand and
>     once the installation is running, the .link file has already been
>     written. Just wanted to mention it nonetheless.

Yeah, it's intended. In the auto-installer case, we basically have to
trust the administrator to do things (more) diligently, as checking
whether MAC addresses actually exist can only be done at installation
time, really.

Although; I'll add a warning when an invalid/unknown MAC address is
encountered at the start of the installation, so that there is at least
_some_ notice.

> - Testing invalid interface names in GUI, TUI, autoinstaller
>     Noticed that in the GUI, the error dialog will show up behind the
>     form where users enter the interface name. The form cannot really be
>     interacted with and the window has to be moved to the side to reveal
>     the error message.

Oh, that's interesting. I'll look into it, thanks!

> - Explicitly test the case of pinning a fully numeric interface, since
>   it is allowed by the installers, but systemd does not allow this [0].
>     The result of this is that the interface that's affected does not
>     come up on first boot, since /etc/network/interfaces configures the
>     numeric-only interface which does not exist.

Yep, going to add some additional validation for interface names.

> - Checked that disabling pinning actually does not set any interface
>   names
>
> Other than the above, this seems to work as advertised. Nice work!
>
> Also had a look at the code and left a few comments on the individual
> patches, but did not notice any real problems with it. A single patch
> seems to add code that is not correctly formatted and other than that
> just added some suggestions.
>
> With the comments on the individual patches addressed, consider this:
> Tested-by: Michael Köppl <m.koeppl at proxmox.com>
> Reviewed-by: Michael Köppl <m.koeppl at proxmox.com>

Thanks!