Re: What happened to network devices?

[Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net>]

James Youngman wrote:
> On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 5:30 PM, lee <lee@yun.yagibdah.de> wrote:
>   
> > On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 06:40:00PM -0500, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
> >     
> > > In <20090529225111.GF1901@cat.rubenette.is-a-geek.com>, lee wrote:
> > >       
> > > > Anyway, I'd like to know what happened
> > > > to /dev/eth0.
> > > >         
> > > I've never had a Linux box where /dev/eth0 existed.  That said, I'm only been
> > > using it as my main OS since the end of 2004.
> > >       
for an understanding of how ethernet interfaces work under linux, do a 
"man interfaces" and nose around in /etc/network

then, just to get more confused, do a "man udev"

/etc/network contains config. files for if-up and if-down - including 
the rules for things like assigning an IP address to eth0

/etc/udev contains rules for assigning device names to physical devices 
- udev does things like scans for network devices and assign eth0 to one 
of them

one of the more confusing things is that, under some circumstances, a 
machine will come up with eth0 assigned to a different physical 
interface than you were expecting - the default rules try to keep eth0 
(or ethn) attached to the same mac address - so if you replace an 
ethernet card, or move cards around, you can find that you no longer 
have a network connection (I discovered this the hard way when 
recovering from a badly crashed server)

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra