Udev renames eth0 to eth2. I'm hypothesizing that this is what is stopping internet connections. Is there a way to stop udev from doing this? Debian Lenny 5 i386 (32 bit).

[Background: Using a Debian Lenny 5 i386 (32 bit) guest in virtual box, the software computer. The host is Lenny 5 amd64.

Got some trouble and after fix the guest would not get internet - use it because flash player does not support amd64. Discovered udev was renaming eth0 to eth2; replaced 'eth0' with 'eth2' in /etc/network/interfaces and eth2 came up - eth0 would not come up. But internet will still not work.

So anyone work this out?? Great thanks.]

Run 'dhclient' as root in the Guest and you should have internet again. The interface name change is because the MAC address changed. Linux creates a new interface name when it detects an interface with a different MAC address. You can change this by editing or removing /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules and reboot.

I've had a problem doing a successful dist-upgrade on a sid system after isc-dhcp-common and client where installed as NEW packages and dhcp3-common and client were upgraded.(at the same time)

I'm wondering if the file you've mentioned is causing the problem. I'll just remove it I think, /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules and try the dist-upgrade again. There isn't a lot of documentation regarding the isc-dhcp common and client packages. From /usr/share/doc/dhcp3-client/README.Debian there's this:

PLEASE NOTE: Upon upgrading dhcp3-client, dhclient is NOT restarted. Therefore,
after upgrading, the version of dhclient running will still be from the
previous version of dhcp3-client that was installed.

But there's nothing about how to restart the upgraded client, no script to edit in /etc/default for instance, which would have been thoughtful.

There's a README in /usr/share/doc/dhcp3-common a brief HOWTO as it were, but it doesn't seem to address where one starts off regarding apt's installation. There is no 'subdirectory' to cd to as it were. I mean we're installing .debs here, not having to compile or run ./ after downloading etc.

I'll try removing the file you mentioned, (/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules) and see if that changes everything. If so, then your letter has helped me a lot and for that, thanks. If not I'll be back.

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C