I'm trying to set a static IP address in Fedora 9. After Network Manager kept getting in my way, I removed it (yum remove networkmanager). I prefer using the command line.

The weird problem I'm having is that every time I reboot my computer, the interface of my network card increments by 1. So, eth0 becomes eth1, eth2, eth3, and so on. Needless to say this is rather annoying. And I'm now up to eth24:

# /sbin/ifconfig -a

eth24 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:00:6C:7F:FB:4F
inet addr:192.168.1.10 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::200:6cff:fe7f:fb4f/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:4455 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2587 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:2483446 (2.3 MiB) TX bytes:414372 (404.6 KiB)
Interrupt:23 Base address:0xa000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:2734 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2734 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:149296 (145.7 KiB) TX bytes:149296 (145.7 KiB)


I'm able to get onto the internet only by renaming ifcfg-eth0 to something like ifcfg-eth24 and changing the DEVICE=eth0 line. My ifcfg-eth0 is as follows:

# nVidia Corporation MCP61 Ethernet
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=none
HWADDR=00:00:6c:b2:9f:79
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
IPADDR=192.168.1.10
NETWORK=192.168.1.0
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
BROADCAST=192.168.1.255
GATEWAY=192.168.1.5
NM_CONTROLLED=no



So what's going on here?

BTW, forgot to mention that I disabled networkmanager in chkconfig and enabled network. So I didn't miss that step.

Oh and I've set BOOTPROTO=static. Somewhere along the way that must have been set to none with the tinkering I was doing.

Still googling this. Apparently this has something to do with the persistent net rules in /etc/udev. I'm looking at /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules and am a bit baffled. It seems to be finding a different MAC address for my NIC on each reboot. Not going to post all 24 entries, but enough so you get an idea:


# This file was automatically generated by the /lib/udev/write_net_rules
# program run by the persistent-net-generator.rules rules file.
#
# You can modify it, as long as you keep each rule on a single line.

# nVidia Corporation MCP61 Ethernet (rule written by anaconda)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:00:6c:b2:9f:79", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth0"

# PCI device 0x10de:0x03ef (forcedeth)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:00:6c:e8:2f:4d", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth1"

# PCI device 0x10de:0x03ef (forcedeth)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:00:6c:8e:02:80", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth2"

# PCI device 0x10de:0x03ef (forcedeth)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:00:6c:a0:29:8e", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth3"

# PCI device 0x10de:0x03ef (forcedeth)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:00:6c:d5:f2:be", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth4"

# PCI device 0x10de:0x03ef (forcedeth)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:00:6c:6b:42:e2", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth5"

# PCI device 0x10de:0x03ef (forcedeth)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:00:6c:3e:24:41", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth6

Ok...I've implemented an ugly hack to fix what seems to be a bug.

In /etc/udev/rules.d, I renamed 75-persistent-net-generator.rules to keep it from getting read. I then edited 70-persistent-net.rules to remove the eth1, eth2 lines. After a reboot my interface is now at eth0 and I don't seem to have any problems getting out to the internet. This will probably bite me when I go to add a second NIC someday having completely forgotten having done this.

If someone familiar with this problem could explain what's going on and perhaps propose a more elegant solution, I'd appreciate it. I admit my enthusiasm goes out the window when I learn it's a bug, not a learning situation and I have a ton of work that needs to get done.