Re: dreaded ethernet device renaming

[Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com>]

On Thu, 31 Mar 2011 04:37:57 -0400 (EDT), David Goodenough wrote:
> have a look at /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules.  This file
> tries to make sure that network adapters are always named in the same
> way in whatever order they are started.  The problem comes when you replace a 
> network adapter.  To get the system to accept the new adapter as the original 
> simply remove this file and reboot.  Udev will then recreate the file using  
> the now installed adapters.

That works fine on machines that have only one network adapter (not counting lo).
But if your machine has more than one network adapter, it is a good idea to
rename the file, rather than erase it.  Make sure the new version of the
file does not end in .rules, so that it won't take effect.  After a
shutdown and reboot, a new version of /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
will be generated.  You can then compare the old version of the file with
the new version of the file and figure out which MAC address was replaced
with which MAC address.  Then, edit the old version of the file and
change the old MAC address to the new MAC address.  Save the changes,
exit the editor, erase the new version of the file (the one you didn't
edit), rename the old version of the file to the production name, shutdown
and reboot.  The new network adapter will now have the interface name of
the old adapter.

-- 
  .''`.     Stephen Powell    
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