Hi,
On Wed, Nov 12, 2025 at 10:44:07PM -0500, Eben King wrote:
On 10/16/25 11:11, Richard Owlett wrote:
All the instructions I've seen depend on device naming conventions that
Debian has not used since Stretch.
[ See https://wiki.debian.org/NetworkConfiguration which says:
> Since Stretch, old-style interface names (eth0, wlan1 etc.) have
> been replaced by names based on hardware location (enp0s31f6,
> wlp1s7 etc.). For USB dongles, these can even include the MAC
> address: enx2c56ac39ec0d).
]
eben@cerberus:~$ cat /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*",
ATTR{address}=="00:1b:21:b6:8a:84", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1",
KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth0"
I really think you should have a read through the rest of this thread to
get a handle on what level Richard is at with his use of Debian. What
I'm trying to say is that I really doubt that a very terse message about
udev rules is going to be at all usable for Richard.
Furthermore, what you would then find is that Richard's network device
changes MAC address at every power cycle, so even if Richard did decide
that this was the way to go and was able to make a start on it, your
suggestion wouldn't actually work for him. No doubt a udev rule *can* be
crafted that works in Richard's case to give his network device a stable
name, but it's going to be a bit more complicated than what you have
posted here.
But most importantly, nowhere in this thread has it actually been shown
that the fact that Richard's network device changes name (due to it
changing MAC address) is any barrier to his intended use of
vnstat. Others have shown that vnstat can aggregate traffic from all
interfaces, and this is the only network device that Richard has in use.
So this may be a rabbit hole that does not need to be gone down, and
past experience suggests that a lot of people could spend a lot of time
trying to explain to Richard how to write udev rules for no practical
benefit.
Unless of course Richard decides that he wants to learn about udev
rules just for the sake of it.
I appreciate that you are just trying to give a solution to the stated
problem that you are replying to, but in this case the rest of the
thread has established that this isn't really a problem for Richard's
end goal (monthly traffic stats with vnstat)
Thanks,
Andy