[dpdk-dev] [RFC v2] net/mlx5: support new naming scheme for representors

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 07:14:07 +0000
Dekel Peled <dekelp at mellanox.com> wrote:

> In current kernel implementation, the physical port name for representors is a numeric string (i.e. '0', '1', etc.).
> 
> 
> 
> Kernel patch [1] implements an updated scheme for naming of representors ports.
> 
> The new scheme gives a unique name for each port using the PF ID and the VF ID.
> 
> Uplink representors are named 'p0', 'p1', etc.
> 
> VF representors are named 'pf0vf0', 'pf0vf1', 'pf1vf0', 'pf1vf1', etc.


Depending on kernel to use any particular naming policy is going to be problematic.
Users will want to run on older kernels, and many distributions rename interfaces
through udev or other mechanism.