[ovs-discuss] interface mac setting

[Ben Pfaff]

On Tue, Apr 24, 2018 at 10:55:36AM +0800, Tonghao Zhang wrote:
> One question, why now ovs can only set the mac of internal interface,
> for example:
> 
> ovs-vsctl set Interface p1 type=internal mac=\"00:11:22:33:44:55\"
> ovs-vsctl get Interface p1 mac_in_use
> 
> And the doc about 'mac' is not explained, why we cannot set it for
> other type interface. So it's a bug?

It's more like a bug in the documentation.  Please feel free to submit
an update.

The reasoning here is that the OVS database isn't a good place to set
things for which OVS is not the source of truth.  Suppose someone comes
along and runs "ifconfig" or "ip" to change the MAC address.  In that
case, the OVS database is then out-of-date.  Should OVS then immediately
set the MAC address back to what's in the database?  It's not good for
OVS to start fights like that.