I just made a new CentOS 5.4 installation. The machine has an Intel 10/100 and an Intel GB on board, and a Broadcom GB card on a PCI-X (64 bit) slot. After the install finished, I noticed that the order and naming of the Ethernet interfaces is totally screwed up. Under Network Manager, the Intel GB card shows the MAC address of the Broadcom and vice-versa. As a consequence, none of them works. When I push the Probe button, they show each other's MAC Adress. The names of the devices do not correspond to the names of the interfaces. If I correct the problem by manually editing the configuration files, they MAY get wrong again upon reboot. Only the 10/100 interface stays put.
After a remote reboot for kernel update, I just lost connection with the machine, so I guess it happened again. This NEVER happened with CentOS 5.2 or 5.3 on the same machine.
I want to manually assign a ID to the cards and let them keep it forever. Will the manual entry of the HWADDR=/ /parameter in the ifcfg-eth<x> files fix this for good or will it be overrided by some other component of the OS?
Thank you.