True link equalizer (teql0 device) causes python-netifaces to misbehave

[Alex Myodov]

The usual workflow for netifaces modules, when you get the list of interfaces via netifaces.interfaces() and then, for every interface, get the details via netifaces.ifaddresses(), fails when you have a teql0 device in the system:

Python 2.7.1+ (r271:86832, Feb 24 2011, 15:11:59)
[GCC 4.5.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import netifaces
>>> netifaces.interfaces()
['lo', 'eth0', 'dummy0', 'teql0', 'tunl0', 'gre0', 'sit0', 'ip6tnl0']
>>> netifaces.ifaddresses("teql0")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: You must specify a valid interface name.

The issue was mentioned by the author once ( http://alastairs-place.net/2007/03/netifaces ), but either he did not fix it upstream, or it was not propagated to Ubuntu; in any event, this is still present in natty's python-netifaces=0.5-2.1build1.

The fix for the issue was proposed at the author's page as well ("Well in a way, the problem is that the line ”found = TRUE;” should be above the test for a no-address entry. That way you'd get an empty dictionary rather than a ValueError."), would be great to either persuade author to fix it, or to fix it ourselves and propagate to Debian.

[Chuck Short (zulcss)]

Still a problem with oneiric as well.

chuck