Problem: Installing Gentoo on multpile (same) machines

[syvox]

Hi!
First of all Gentoo is great - It is easily to set up - (with a little reading and trying - great job - also I used it to get a new life for some old P3 Compaq Presarios (600MHZ and 256MB RAM - other Distributions are unuseable with this hardware) - as slow Desktop Machines with VoIP functionality - and it works - but only on one machine - here is my "story".

I first installed Gentoo and all the stuff (Fluxbox - smaller selfmade Kernel) - X and Ekiga on one compaq machine - and there it works perfectly. (So it is no kernelproblem). One Intel Pro 10/100 ethernetcard ist eth0, alsa sound founds a Ensoniq 1371 card and so on... but - there had to be a but - it worked so perfectly until i tried to make a diskimage and install this on the same compaq all over the place...

I used PING (Partition Image is not Ghost) for this thing - handy little program with SMB/NFS and USB support (small Linux with some Menü). and "imaged" the complete hard disk.

When I re"image" this diskimage on another (same!) compaq - something strange happends:

Suddenly the Intel Pro 10/100 Ethernetcard ist not eth0 but eth1, sometimes eth2 (makes it impossible to guess and also to configure the dhcpd-client) - and also the alsa sound is not working - until i unload and reload alsa - then suddenly it works (but not every time!) - oh yes I forgot - the IRQs and other Stuff are all some configured in the BIOS - simple the same machines....

Has somebody a clue or a hint he or she can give me? Because of the slow CPU a "reinstall by script or something" is out of question..
- is there a way to "reset" the dev System or HAL or something?

Thanks in advance

Syvox

[NeddySeagoon]

syvox,

Welcome to gntoo. To fix your network issue delete the file /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules and reboot.
This file is recreated when udev starts or on boot if its missing.
It links a MAC address to an interface name and when you copied this file from the original install, it was set up for that machines eth0.
As eth0 was taken, udev assigned the discovered card eth1.

Its a little worrying that sometimes its eth2. That suggests the machine is misreading the MAC address on occasions.

If the sound card and network card are plugged into PCI slots, remove them and replace them to 'wipe' the contacts
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[syvox]

Hi and Thanx..

I try that tomorrow and give response if it works... had the suspision that something with udev is the problem - (I used Gentoo before udev about 2 years ago and before udev it was no problem to "clone" disks... ) perhaps i make an install script which purges the files and then purges itself....

Thankx for your help - and keep Gentoo living - its the best and the most userfriendly (if you know what you want and what you are doing) distribution out there....

Syvox