NIC problem

[David A. Bandel]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 7:30 PM, Collins Richey <crichey at gmail.com> 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.
>


You got the rhel kludge from others.  In all my systems, udev takes
care of this in the udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules file that
rearranges the NICs by hwaddr when it comes up.  This is both a
blessing and a curse as I have to remember if I change out a NIC to
alter the entry in the persistent rules file or I have no network when
I boot up (since I have no configuration for ethX, X!=0).

Ciao,

David A. Bandel
-- 
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