I'm trying to run an Xterasys PCI wireless card (ADM8211) on RedHat 8. It installs fine and works like a dream, but it shows up as eth0 instead of wlan0.

When I reboot, then, ithe system thinks it is an Ethernet card, and so it won't work unless I reinstall. When I try to scan the slots, it only allows eth and not wlan.

So may basic question is, do I need to install something to make the system read the card as wlan0 when I install it?

John Emil

I sort of have the same problem, except the wireless still works as eth0, it's just I'd rather my wired ethernet card be called eth0 and the wireless one wlan or eth1. Plus for some reason every boot up it now defaults to the wireless card being up as eth0, and the wired one, now eth1, is disabled. It gets annoying having to take the wireless down, put the wired up, and then set up the routes everytime I boot up.

Edit: I'm using the intel pro 2100 chipset in a laptop.

edit your /etc/pcmcia/network and put the lines in the bottom that you type everytime, or make a shell script (somewhere in your path) that does this for you example:

#!/bin/bash
ifdown eth0
ifup eth1
iproutes
etc...

How is that suppose to work? The intel wireless chipsets are mini-pci, not pcmcia.

In my opinion, wireless cards should also use ethX. Why? Because it acts like an ethernet card, and I don't like having different names for everything. This way, either my wireless card or ethernet card show up on my system as eth0 and my simple network scripts can up the interface without checking if wlan0 exists or eth0 exists. On *bsd (AFAIK), every driver seems to have their own prefix - their adm8211 driver, for example, creates names like atw0.

However, the *real* solution to network interface naming problems is to use nameif or something of the sort. nameif renames your network interfaces according to their MAC address, so you can rename your interface to "wireless_card", for example. So regardless of the order you plug your network devices in or what name the driver chose, they'll always have the same name.

But.. I dunno how well distros/hotplug support nameif.

This sounds reasonable, but then why and how when it finds my wireless card (as eth0) is its type being changed from "wireless" to "ethernet"? When I first install it (and it works) it shows as type "wireless", but on a reboot it is changed to "ethernet" and thus does not match the driver.

John Emil

I don't know where you're finding type "ethernet" or "wireless". It sounds like a distro specific issue.

i use mandrake 10, my wireless card shows up as eth0 when i have both wireless and wired in my docking station, i get eth0 and eth1 and have to use iwconfig to discover which is the wireless. having them named wi0 and eth0 would be easier to set up batch scripts for, you don't use wep, accesspoint, etc on the wired card.

The naming of ethernet interfaces is really a userspace issue. (in other words, your distro's job) The same problem would happen anyway with two wired cards - which one do you plug into (or which card is currently plugged in)?

hmmmm i used to have tat prob when i first installed ndiswrapper...i have eth0 and eth1....but configuring the eth1 ends me with no success

after tat i decide to reinstall everything...i gt wlan0 and eth0 and i finally gt tat to work...
i feel it would give a clear distinct name if the distro use wlan0 and eth0

anyone feels the same?

ndiswrapper (AFAIK) always uses wlan%d, so if you don't see wlan0 or such and you're using ndiswrapper, something is probably wrong..

The drivers name the interfaces eth or wlan, but the distros can change it. (they don't) Any driver that currently uses wlan is highly unlikely to switch to using eth, and vice versa. It'd unexpectedly break configurations that don't rename interfaces, which is probably 99.9% of the people out there.