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zizheng

Member

Registered: 2016-12-11

Posts: 18

Effect of changing network name?

Today when I was changing some settings in NetworkManager, I noticed there is this field "Name" under the "Identity" tab that I can change. It was set to "enp0s31f6" before (my MAC address is "xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (enp0s31f6)"), and I changed it to "eth0" to see what would happen. Well, actually nothing seemed to have changed -- The output of

ip link show

doesn't contain "eth0" at all, only "enp0s31f6".

The only place where I could find anything about "eth0" is in the file "/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/eth0":

[connection]
id=eth0
uuid=a31aa62a-99d1-4db0-8140-08579b064005
type=ethernet
interface-name=enp0s31f6
permissions=
secondaries=
timestamp=1481431757

...

So my question is, what effect does changing network device name has? Is it reflected anywhere else than in NetworkManager?

Last edited by zizheng (2016-12-11 05:19:24)

ayekat

Member

Registered: 2011-01-17

Posts: 1,616

Re: Effect of changing network name?

As you can see, `interface-name` (which is the relevant information for other tools, like `ip`) is still enp0s31f6.

I do not use NetworkManager, and I have never encountered the concept of giving network devices "names" (other than the interface identifiers set by udev).
So I'd say that "connection name" or "connection identifier" is actually just relevant to NetworkManager. You could use it to give a more human-readable name (like "wired connection" or "I like trains!" or something that helps you identify the configuration).

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pkgs │ hacks │ cfg │ blag