Adding a virtual wireless interface is broken

[Romano Giannetti]

This is quite simple. I used to split my wifi network with:

      sudo iw dev wlan0 interface add wlan1 type station

...and it used to work (at least on some machine). Now if I do the same I have:

       kernel: [31130.438726] systemd-udevd[24264]: renamed network interface wlan1 to rename4

...and "rename4" is not recognized at all as a wifi interface. The problem probably stems from the fact that the MAC address is the same...

I have no biosdevname package installed.

Any help will be appreciated.

System is Ubuntu 14.04 up-to-date.
[romano:~] % uname -a
Linux RRyS 3.13.0-40-generic #69-Ubuntu SMP Thu Nov 13 17:53:56 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[romano:~] % wajig status udev
Package Installed Previous Now State
=======================-===============-===============-===============-=====
udev 204-5ubuntu20.8 204-5ubuntu20.8 204-5ubuntu20.8 install

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 90:2b:34:a4:fe:3e
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:65536 Metric:1
          RX packets:47134 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:47134 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:20940311 (20.9 MB) TX bytes:20940311 (20.9 MB)

rename4 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 64:70:02:d9:f4:f7
          BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

rename5 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 64:70:02:d9:f4:f7
          BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 64:70:02:d9:f4:f7
          inet addr:192.168.1.222 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::6670:2ff:fed9:f4f7/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
          RX packets:213408 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:214770 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:137642894 (137.6 MB) TX bytes:54703374 (54.7 MB)

[Guest (disposable-s)]

Even when I add 'net.ifnames=0' and 'biosdevname=0' to /etc/default/grub:
> cat /etc/default/grub
[snip]
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="net.ifnames=0 biosdevname=0"
[snip]

and update-grub + reboot, udev still renames my interfaces when adding new virtual wifi interfaces (see first post for instructions).

In my opinion, this behaviour is a serious bug.
When I tell udev not to touch my network interfaces (with net.ifnames=0 - or is there another option?),
it has to honour my decision.

My system is:
> cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=14.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=trusty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS"

> uname -a
Linux [hostname snipped] 3.13.0-44-generic #73-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 16 00:22:43 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[Romano Giannetti (romano-giannetti)]

@Guest (disposable-s) , if you check "this bug affects you" at the top of the bug report it will be confirmed, and maybe we will have a bit of attention from the developers.

Thanks!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Saim Salman (17100201-j)]

Is there some other method other than this to make a virtual interface?

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

In 15.04 we dropped the old 75-persistent-net-generator.rules which causes this trouble, in favor of http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/PredictableNetworkInterfaceNames/ , so this should work now.

[Daniyal Javani (daniyal-javani)]

So, it's no longer work in 14.04 and there is not other way?