On Thu, Jan 08, 2009 at 06:53:12AM +0900, John Summerfield wrote:
Michal Jaegermann wrote:
>
>Could you explain how a kernel update can change a network interface
>name which happens to be tied up to a MAC address of that interface?
>Or you have on hands network cards with identical MACs? You likely
>know that you can run into some grief with that no matter what.
Yesterday, after seeing this, I saw two other emails on two other lists,
where people reported their network interfaces changed names.
One on SLED, one on RHEL.
So which one of these two was the current Fedora? None? Oh...
I know that you can change an interface name. It is not so easy
to do that if it is tied to a MAC of a interface. Sometimes this
is actually a PITA when, for whatever reasons, you do want to change
these names and you have to fish out where this connection was
recorded.
If you will look closer then in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-*
files there is HWADDR and it was automatically filled for quite a
while now although not from "always". If those configuration files
are not used then /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules are
doing a similar thing.
OTOH 'man ifrename' and /etc/iftab were available when needed I do
not remember now for how long. The only thing is that once a
network interface went up then it is too late for renaming.
Michal