[crossbow-discuss] dladm - names with "-"

[Robert Milkowski]

>As a user, that makes sense. As a system designer, I don't think it
>does. Allowing this means that we just cannot predict what users will
>do -- they'll be *allowed* to use the full range of characters, even if
>some are "not recommended."

I'm not arguing to allow a full character set rather to:

1) remove restriction that interface name has to end with a number
2) allow one more character in interface names: "-"

>For what it's worth, I think you're looking at this at far too low a
>level. Individual datalinks are not really "user" objects. They're
>administrative features, 

What about being admin-friendly then? And about the stigma which sticks to Solaris that it is not flexible and hard to manage? Both Linux and FreeBSD don't have the two restrictions I'm talking about.

While I agree that there needs to be a line drawn somewhere and one needs to be cautious about allowing extra characters (see ps.) I still don't think that these two particular restrictions make sense and are definitely irritating and provide worse user/admin experience than on other UNIX-like platforms.

I guess that most sysadmins would be much happier if you would restrict "_" instead of "-" (not that I'm arguing for restricting "_"). 

ps.
I'm not arguing about going wild like FreeBSD has when it allows "%$" characters in device names and then startup scripts fail... that's the other end of a spectrum


-- 
Robert Milkowski
http://milek.blogspot.com
-- 
This message posted from opensolaris.org