Ethernet interface number increases by one every boot
 

Hello,
I am testing Debian etch and I very impressed so far but I have a strange problem. Every time the system boots the number of the ethernet interface (i.e. eth0...) increases by one. I am now on eth10 from a starting point of 0. I have no idea what is going on, it works btw.

The ethernet interface in onboard and the chipset is nvidia nforce 400.

/etc/network/interfaces is as follows...
Anyone know whats going on?
Cheers,
Phil

That looks like an oddity in udev..

You could try writing a rule that will assign the Ethernet interface to eth0 permanently.

http://www.reactivated.net/writing_u...#example-netif

I see by a quick search you are not the only one to have run into this, and not just on Etch, but I see no clear fix defined.

You could try editing;
/etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules


Make sure your network card in there matches the mac address and change the eth line to eth0

example;

# PCI device 0x10de:0x0066 (forcedeth)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS{address}=="mac address here", NAME="eth0

# PCI device 0x10b7:0x9201 (3c59x)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS{address}=="mac address here", NAME="eth1

I have static addresses in interfaces file.Should work with dhcp too.

Have a look in /etc/udev/rules.d/z45_persistent-net-generator.rules,basically it writes to z25_persistent-net.rules.
I just noticed upon looking in the file that my 2 cards,although the names have not changed as I binded them to driver,mac,and eth0(you can name them anything you want by the way here),it seems to be repeated quite a bit....I am guessing for every reboot.
I am looking into this now.

Hello,
Okay in /etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules there was a line defining the ethernet card 11 times. So the mac address was the same on each line. So I'm guessing that the line in /etc/udev/rules.d/z45_persistent-net-generator.rules that looks to see if the interface has already be set is not working correctly. I don't know how to fix it.

Phil

Hi,
Okay so I do know how to fix it. I decided that the thing that was generating the rules was causing the problem so I deactivated it by renaming it to /etc/udev/rules.d/z45_persistent-net-generator.rules.old. I then deleted all the incorrect entries in /etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules leaving the first one that assigned the interface as eth0.

This now assigns the interface correctly and all is well.
Thanks for the tip chaps, very helpful.
Phil