F18: unpredictable 'Predictable Network Interface Names'?

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Mon, 25 Feb 2013 21:33:04 -0500
Sam Varshavchik <mrsam at courier-mta.com> wrote:
> Marko Vojinovic writes:
> 
> > Maybe the OP can enlighten me *why* does he need MAC-oriented naming
> > scheme so badly? Just curious... :-)
> 
> This is how the network devices were configured originally, by
> whatever component was used to install whatever Fedora release was
> initially installed on this machine. I don't remember which one it
> was, but that must've been how ifcfg-* was set up some time ago, by
> whatever version of Anaconda was in effect at that time.
> 
> I don't see the big hassle with binding network interfaces by MAC
> addresses. It's not like I replace NIC cards every week.

Not necessarily the NIC itself. But moving the hard drive from a dead
box to a new box will have the same effect. This is done more often,
I guess.

Also, have you ever built a cluster? Typically, you install and
configure everything on one system, and then push the harddrive image
to all other (headless) nodes. Once the whole thing boots, you find out
that all config files for all NICs are wrong (since MAC addresses will
be different), and you have no network access to any of the nodes...
On a 100-node cluster this can be a very big pain.

Though I admit that building a three-digit-node cluster is not an "every
week" thing either. :-)

Best, :-)
Marko