[xubuntu-users] How to force network interface assignment

[John Shane]

On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 23:15:08 -0500
"Bradly J. McConnell" <bradly.mcconnell at gmail.com> wrote:

>  
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com 
> > [mailto:xubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of 
> > John Shane
> > Sent: Monday, February 12, 2007 8:23 PM
> > To: xubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> > Subject: [xubuntu-users] How to force network interface assignment
> > 
> > Anyway, as always, there are some issues to sort out and one 
> > of them is how to force XU to assign the wireless card to 
> > eth1 instead of sometimes assigning it to eth0.  So far I 
> > haven't found anything through googling, at least not that 
> > answers this specific issue.
> > I've tried to edit /etc/network/interfaces but that doesn't 
> > govern which interface is assigned to which piece of 
> > hardware.  I've looked in the udev rules but if the answer is 
> > there I haven't found it. If possible I'd like eth1 to always 
> > be the wireless card and eth0 to always be the built in NIC.  
> > Can anyone point me to an explanation of how to do this?  
> > Many thanks.  John
> > 
> 
> This just came up on my local LUG list.  This was taken from a
> server install, but I think it will still work.
> Here is what they had to say about it:
> 
> cp at mintaka:~$ cat /etc/iftab
> # This file assigns persistent names to network interfaces.  See
> # iftab(5).
> eth0 mac 00:90:27:e6:28:d6
> eth1 mac 00:c0:f0:28:e8:3c
> 
> Brad
> 
>
Thanks Brad.  Do you know how /etc/iftab and udev rules interact?  I
just looked at my /etc/iftab settings and they are set to reflect
the original way XU was installed before I added a udev rule to
define the interface. Although /etc/iftab is opposite of my udev
rules, the udev rules are the working configuration once the system
finishes booting.

As your example shows, iftab says it assigns persistent names to
network interfaces.  I wonder then if it's actually necessary to go
through the trouble of writing a new udev rule.  Just edit iftab?
And if you edit iftab do you still need to
change /etc/network/interfaces?

I see that the iftab man page refers to another tool ifrename but
that one is not included in XU and synaptic doesn't find it either.

It would be helpful if the XU developers included a step in the
installation process where the user was given the option of how to
identify the various network interfaces found during the hardware
scan.

John