orphaned mac-address objects

[olafhering]

This is my observation with v4.4.2:

There are a bunch of dcim/mac-address, dcim/interface and virtualization/interface objects.

I do not know how the mac-address objects were created. A few of them have their assigned_object_type and assigned_object_id set to null. That makes them look like orphans, which could be recycled. They can be searched by assigned_object_id__empty=true. Their id can be assigned to dcim/interfaces#primary_mac_address with PATCH.

To my surprise such attempt to PATCH leads to a one-way relationship: the web interfaces shows a mac-address as primary, but the actual mac-address object remains unchanged, with assigned_object_id and assigned_object_type set to null. My expectation was that either the mac-address object gets updated as well, or that an error is thrown, which demands to update the mac-address object first and let it point to the interface object.

According to the changelog, newer versions have additional query capabilities in that area. I expect that what looks like an orphan today, can be inspected further and the primary_mac_address relationship can be found and fixed.

Until the upgrade is deployed, I probably need to collect all interface and all mac-address objects to correct their actual relationship. That might be an expensive operation, unless there are already ways to query the primary_mac_address state today.

[olafhering]

An interface object where the primary_mac_address points to an id with an apparently orphaned mac-address object can be found with dcim/interfaces/?primary_mac_address_id=id. That way I can already undo part of the existing damage, and fix the pre-existing inconsistencies.