NIC problem

[Vu Pham]

Collins Richey wrote:
> Here's the background. We run a lot of RHEL4 desktops with two extra
> NICs - one for a Vmplayer Win/XP image, and one for an extra private
> network to connect to test equipment. Most of the existing cards we
> have are 10/100, but we've gotten some newer cards that are
> 10/100/1000 since our newer Cisco switches have gigabit capability.
> 
> Using the older cards (identical ones), there is never a problem with
> Ethn ordering. The card in the slot nearest the NIC connector on the
> MB (used for the Linux host) is always ETH1 and the other card is
> always ETH2. Now with the gigabit cards it's a crapshoot to determine
> which card will be detected as ETH1/2. The order varies with each
> reboot!
> 
> Anyone have a clue about the cause and/or a workaround for this?
> 
> In case that matters, the boxes are mostly HP 5750 towers.

Using HWADDR=your-mac-addr in ifcfg-eth0 ( and ifcfg-eth1, eth2 ... ) 
will help keeping the order unchanged.

The following paragraph is from RHEL Deployment Guide:
HWADDR=<MAC-address> where <MAC-address> is the hardware address of the 
Ethernet device in the form AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF. This directive is useful 
for machines with multiple NICs to ensure that the interfaces are 
assigned the correct device names regardless of the configured load
order for each NIC's module. This directive should not be used in 
conjunction with MACADDR.


HTH,
Vu