[CVALE] eth0 vs. eth1

[Matt R Hall]

On 8/21/07, Patrick Bennett <stnick at bennettbungalow.com> wrote:
> this seems really basic, but low and behold i don't seem to be able to
> figure out how to do it....
>
> i've got two nics in my linux box, nicA and nicB.  How do I specify that
> nicA should always be eth0 and nicB should always be eth1?  No GUI tools
> allowed.
>
> If it matters, I am using debian etch.  nicA is an isa 10mb ne 2000
> clone.  nicB is a 3com 3c59x card.

Patrick,

I think this is actually pretty hard to do right. The order will
change based on the order of the cards in the ISA / PCI bus ID numbers
as seen with lspci (I don't remember the name of the companion tool
for ISA... maybe something in isapnptools). Since NICs no longer have
dev entries like they did in old-school Linux, you can't do it with
udev settings like you can with other devices which are handled more
conventionally.

The best way to do it would be to find some way of being sure that one
NIC's kernel module always loads before the other NIC's kernel module.

Good luck,
Matt