forcing network device name

juniper · l33t Joined: 22 Oct 2004 Posts: 959 Location: we the north

hello all,

hi, i am having a bit of a problem. i just got an ethernet card and it works fine, but the only problem is the following. there is only on pcmcia slot and i want to use both the wired card and the wireless. luckily, i have hotplug running and i can just pull out one card and replace it with another and everything is detected right away.

The problem is that if i take out the wired ethernet card (which is recognized as eth0) and i put in the wireless card it is also recognized as eth0. this causes quite a bit of hassle.

so, my question is is there a way to force, say the wireless card, to be recognized as eth1?

i have an smc 2835w and i am using the prism54 module.

thanks.

j

gakula · n00b Joined: 05 Jan 2004 Posts: 72

are you use udev or devfs?

udev gives you a flexabbility to name your device file based on model name , brand, serial number, whatever.

anyway, builting ethernet card is always present so you can bring it on before any pcmcia one by loading its driver (module) at the boot time. it then becomes eth0 and anything else loaded later on is eth1.

juniper · l33t Joined: 22 Oct 2004 Posts: 959 Location: we the north

i am using udev.

i am not certain that you understood my problem. i don't have a builtin ethernet card. in order to put the wireless card in, i must remove the wired ethernet card. the problem is that when the wired card is in, it is assigned eth0. when i remove the wired card and replace it with the wireless card, it is also assigned eth0 (since the wired card was removed, there is no longer an eth0, so the wired card picks it up).

how would you use udev to do this?

j

juniper · l33t Joined: 22 Oct 2004 Posts: 959 Location: we the north

ok, i read the udev docs and the page

http://www.reactivated.net/udevrules.php

i followed the example there and wrote a rule

KERNEL="eth*", SYSFS{address}="00:04:e2:64:0c:a3", NAME="lan"

however, it didn't make a difference. my wireless card is still eth0.

what i did to find the sys address is put the wireless card in and

udevinfo -a -p /sys/class/net/eth0

and it gave me the sysfs{address} info. it is different when i plug in the wired card.

help please. thanks.

j

bendis · n00b Joined: 06 Nov 2002 Posts: 15

Hi,
check ifrename(8) and iftab(5). If you are using hotplug all you need is /etc/iftab. Otherwise you will have to run ifrename before the interfaces are brought up to rename the interfaces.
Hope it'll help...

Regards,
Bendis