Riley writes:
> Andre writes:
> > Try moving the NIC order around and keeping the assocaiated
> > cable with each card constant. You NIC setup will fail.
>
> However, if it's referring to NIC's, then I would say "ascending
> order of hardware address" would be a reasonable choice...
However, this has the same problem as any other scheme in Linux so far:
if you add an adapter, it may/will change the names of the other devices.
If you sort the NICs by MAC address, then on average only half of the
interfaces will change their names. The same holds true with using the
IDE or SCSI address or serial number to get the name.
What is needed is something more permanent (e.g. /etc/nictab, /etc/idetab,
or something based on devfs, as Richard Gooch has suggested) which allows
you to have a permanent NIC->name, IDE serial->name, UUID->name mapping:
00:00:C0:04:FF:2C eth0
00:10:A4:E8:F8:0E eth3
00:20:AF:69:04:F8 eth2
On boot, the defined adapters are given the correct names, and ifconfig
or another tool that reference adapters by name is happy. Any MAC
that doesn't appear is given an unused name and stored into the config
file as such. If, for example, you replaced eth2 with a new card
(which would appear as eth1, as that is the first unused name), you
could still go in and edit this config file so it was called eth2 (after
deleting the old eth2 info). This would save you from having to change
your ifconfig, firewall rules, etc. to use eth1 instead of eth2, but
would still save you from problems if you move the cards around or add
a new card.
This concept is a lot like the AIX object database (ODM), which
"permanently" names all adapters, disks, ports (including serial ports),
etc. I think the things people don't like about the ODM is the fact
that it is a binary database, and that too much was stored in there
(e.g. ifconfig info, static routes, etc) which made it non-intuitive
for Unix people, and a bit of effort to modify... However, the good
thing about the ODM is that it allowed you to add/remove/reconfigure
any devices (which supported hot plugging) while the OS was running,
and not have to worry about what will happen when the system reboots.
Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger \ "If a man ate a pound of pasta and a pound of antipasto,
\ would they cancel out, leaving him still hungry?"
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/ -- Dogbert
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