renaming network interfaces in udev

[Brian May <bam@debian.org>]

Hello,

For some reason I thought it was considered bad to rename eth* to eth* using
udev (race conditions and such).

However, after upgrading my systems to etch, I notice they do just this,
by default:

--- cut ---
# This file was automatically generated by the /lib/udev/write_net_rules
# program, probably run by the persistent-net-generator.rules rules file.
#
# You can modify it, as long as you keep each rule on a single line.

# UNKNOWN device (/class/net/eth0)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVER=="?*", SYSFS{address}=="00:0b:2f:4e:31:65", NAME="eth0"

# UNKNOWN device (/class/net/eth1)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVER=="?*", SYSFS{address}=="00:0b:2f:6d:19:2b", NAME="eth1"

# UNKNOWN device (/class/net/eth2)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVER=="?*", SYSFS{address}=="00:11:06:00:00:00:4b:2f", NAME="eth2"
--- cut ---

Where eth0 is the only real network card on this system.

Unfortunately the above rules broke, and I ended up with eth0 being
not accessible. I only had eth0, and it wasn't the correct device.

I ended up renaming eth* in the above to net* and it works.

So I am really puzzled that the above is the default, because I
thought it was previously mentioned in this mailing list that you
cannot do the above due to race conditions or something.

Comments???

Although my system is working fine, I still get the following message on startup (at least last time I looked):

udevd_event: rename_net_if: error changing net interface name eth1_temp to eth0: timeout

which seems really confusing, IMHO.

Thanks for any advice.

Brian May