Bug#407460: USB ethernet interface renamed after installation on NSLU2 which causes the system to be inaccessible
On Sun, Feb 11, 2007 at 10:06:41PM -0700, Gordon Farquharson wrote:
> On 2/10/07, Gordon Farquharson <gordonfarquharson@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On 1/18/07, Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com> wrote:
> >> Well, I still believe this is a problem with udev. CCing Marco.
> I just tested a patch [1,2] that was applied to udev to fix the
> network interface renaming code to see if it would solve this bug, but
> no luck. The USB ethernet adapter is still (most often) renamed
> eth1_rename despite the rule to name it eth0 in
> /etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules.
AIUI this basically comes down to a conflict over the use of the name
'eth0'; there's a udev rule asking for the USB ethernet adapter to be named
eth0, but the ixp4xx driver is found first, and loaded under this name by
default, with no further rules to rename it to e.g. eth1.
The problem seems as simple as that the ipx4xx driver is *not* included in
d-i, but is included in the installed kernel; so in the installer, the
module is never loaded resulting in the USB adapter getting the eth0 name,
but after a reboot the ipx4xx driver is found first, breaking the handling
of persistent device names.
Which means in turn that a simple fix would be to make ixp4xx available in
the installer so that it can be detected; it certainly makes sense to me
that the onboard ethernet ought to be "eth0", even if it needs extra firmare
to be usable.
Adding the hard-coded rule to rename ixp4xx_mac devices to eth1 would also
seem to be a pretty reliable workaround, as long as it was limited to only
be activated on NSLU2 systems. (You wouldn't want this confusing rule being
added to systems without this hardware!)
Finally, as popular as NSLU2 is, this is still a hardware-specific bug, and
as such I'm inclined to downgrade this bug report. I'm happy for us to have
a well-supported NSLU2 installer in etch, but I don't see that this should
be a blocker for the release if it's not addressed in a timely manner.
Thanks,
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon@debian.org http://www.debian.org/
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