Consistent device naming

[Bill Shirley]

On 5/13/2014 8:59 PM, CLOSE Dave wrote:
> On 05/13/2014 05:39 PM, Russell Miller wrote:
>
>>> I want to run the same software on all of these machines and
>>> having inconsistent names /between/ the machines makes that next to
>>> impossible. Using the new names means that my software has to learn
>>> all those different names and can't easily determine which name
>>> applies to the motherboard port. Using the old names means it can't
>>> predict which name will be given to which port.
>>>
>>> There's got to be a better answer.
>> ... don't use Fedora?
>>
>> Just kidding.  Sort of.
> Well, that option will certainly be considered. But it appears that
> nearly all of the common distributions are going to systemd/udev. Not
> only would I probably still have the same problem, I'd also have to
> learn a whole bunch of different things.
>
>> Assuming since you're posting here that that's not an option :)  You
>> could learn to love the default udev nomenclature, or you could add
>> rules to /etc/udev.d/rules (or whatever the equivalent is) that tie
>> MAC addresses to specific interface names.  It would require a little
>> bit of script-fu, but assuming a competently managed key or password
>> infrastructure, shouldn't take more than an hour or two.
> I've done that. The problem seems to be that what I want to do is to
> /exchange/ the names assigned. One of the renames works but the other
> fails, claiming the new name is already in use. In other circumstances,
> I'd use an intermediate name, orig->temp->target, but I don't know how
> to do that with udev, or even if it is possible.
>
>> Prepare for a whole lot more issues, though.  Upgrading from 13 is a
>> significant upgrade, and there's lots that will go wrong.
>> Particularly on mongrel hardware like yours.
> I know. It will be a "challenge".

I abandoned ethx altogether.  I picked a short mnemonic for my ISP (lan = LAN, wifi = WIFI, ccast = Comcast, ctel = 
Century Tel.). Seems to help with servers having more that one one internet connection:
ifup lan
tcpdump -i ccast blah blah etc.

Hope this helps,
Bill