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SR-IOV is a new standard allowing a single NIC with two (or whatever)
physical jacks expose multiple virtual NICs to Linux. This is handled by
the igb kernel module.

Currently, when it is enabled, multiple eth<x> device are created, in
ascending order, two of them relating to the physical connections, and
the others - to the virtual functions. (And at least once, with an
overlap that lead to eth4 and eth4_rename to be defined.)

It is very confusing for the user to understand which virtual nic is
connected to which physical one. This information is as important as the relation between vlan device (eth0.100) and its parent nic (eth0).

sysfs has this information

# ls /sys/class/net/eth10/device/physfn/net
eth4_rename

but I think that it should be apparent from the device
name, such as eth4@5 for virtual function 5 connected to physical nic 4.

(In reply to comment #0)
> the others - to the virtual functions. (And at least once, with an
> overlap that lead to eth4 and eth4_rename to be defined.)
> 
> sysfs has this information
> 
> # ls /sys/class/net/eth10/device/physfn/net
> eth4_rename

Doh! I thought, I had solved the "_rename" problem!

"eth4@5" sounds like a perfect solution to me!

although, "eth4" might be renamed to e.g. "eth10". Then "eth4@5" leads to incorrect assumptions.

Is this still a problem? Bug 614786 was addressing this in a way.

If you still encounter the "_rename" problem, move all configured interfaces out of the "eth*" namespace and name them e.g. "net[0-9]" in the ifcfg-* files.
Then remove /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules.

Another solution could be "biosdevname" (bug 653901).

I'm afraid that comment 2 convinced me that my suggested naming scheme was not robust enough. Let's hope biosdevname is not too brutal for that purpose.

Shahar, have you recently seen "_rename" in nic names?

(In reply to comment #6)
> I'm afraid that comment 2 convinced me that my suggested naming scheme was not
> robust enough. Let's hope biosdevname is not too brutal for that purpose.
> 
> Shahar, have you recently seen "_rename" in nic names?
No, I never did