[CALUG] Random Network Interfaces

[Bryan J Smith]

From: Rajiv Gunja <opn.src.rocks at gmail.com>
> Summary: What you see on Linux is normal behavior for Linux,
> HP-UX, AIX, Irix and Solaris.

Not quite.

With HP-UX, HP controls the PA-RISC platform.
With AIX, IBM controls the POWER platform.
With Irix, SGI controls the MIPS and IA-64 platforms.
With Solaris, Sun controls the Sun platforms.

Unfortunately for Linux, it does _not_ control the PC platform.  Especially not 
with the legacy PC BIOS (EFI might be another story).

So when it comes to assigning devices to names, it's not exacting by default, 
because of how the PC can rescan/reorder things.

Fortunately, if you set the MAC in the ifcfg-(device) files (under 
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts) on a Fedora-based system, you will always get 
that MAC assigned to the (device).  That is how it has been since around Fedora 
Core 4 or so. To tie down other hardware assignments, udev is utilized, such as 
for fixed disks.


-- 
Bryan J  Smith       Professional, Technical Annoyance 
Linked Profile:     http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith 
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