[Mageia-dev] network interface renaming not working anymore

Thu Aug 16 21:58:31 CEST 2012

'Twas brillig, and Christiaan Welvaart at 16/08/12 20:30 did gyre and
+gimble:
+> hi,
+> 
+> When I finally rebooted a cauldron system that acts as a router, it
+> turned out the network interfaces eth0 and eth1 were switched, exposing
+> "internal" services to the outside world and leaving me without internet
+> access. Syslog contains:
+> Aug 15 22:48:29 zem systemd-udevd[404]: error changing net interface
+> name eth0 to eth1: File exists
+> Aug 15 22:48:29 zem systemd-udevd[404]: error changing net interface
+> name eth1 to eth0: File exists
+> 
+> Of course this has worked for years, so it breaking is not something
+> anyone would expect. It also seems to be unneeded. After some looking
+> around I could (temporarily) fix it quite easily by adding:
+>         ifrename -i eth0 -n rename0
+>         ifrename -i eth1 -n rename1
+>         ifrename -i rename0
+>         ifrename -i rename1
+> to /etc/init.d/network and describing the mapping in /etc/iftab . So now
+> I have two questions:
+> - Has anyone else seen this?
+> - What change is causing this: kernel, udev/systemd, or something else?
+> 
+> The network devices use the same driver so there is no other way to
+> distinguish them than by MAC address or PCI ID.
+
+Yeah this is no longer supported upstream as it was apparently very
+hacky. Last time I asked Kay about it, there was something else to
+replace it but I've not followed up what that is recently. I'll ask him
+again next time we're chatting.
+
+Cheers
+
+Col
+
+
+-- 
+
+Colin Guthrie
+colin(at)mageia.org
+http://colin.guthr.ie/
+
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+  Tribalogic Limited http://www.tribalogic.net/
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+