wireless on either eth1 or eth2

[Derrick Hudson]

On 12/31/05, Daniel Robitaille <robitaille at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a Dell laptop using Dapper with both an internal wired card and
> a wireless card.  While the wired card always shows up as eth0, the
> wireless card shows up as either eth1 and eth2.  Which one of eth1 or
> eth2 it uses seems to change at nearly every reboot.
>
> While it's not really impacting the functionally of my laptop (except
> for the gnome-network applet; I currently keeps two in my panel, one
> or eth1 and one for eth2 to be sure I always have one that works by
> default), I find this curious, and I don't remember this happening in
> Breezy or earlier in the Dapper cycle.  I also uses netapplet, which
> may or may not be related to this.  Anyone has any insight of why my
> laptop is acting that way?

The numbering is pretty much arbitrary and up to the kernel and the
drivers to choose.  However, install the 'ifrename' package and create
an /etc/iftab file to specify a name of your choosing (say wired and
wireless) for each interface.  This will eliminate any side-effects of
the kernel's auto numbering and also prevent the numbers from changing
if you use any removable network adapters.

HTH,
-D