Jerry Geis wrote:

centos 5 had modprobe.conf entries for eth0 and if present eth1. something like: alias eth0 forcedeth alias eth1 e1000e

For the new centos 6 (I have the rhel 6 client installed on my laptop) the modprobe.conf file is gone. Which is fine. I understand files can be created in /etc/modprobe.d and server the same purpose.

My question is I dont see (doing a grep) any eth0 alias's in the files in /etc/modprobe.d/*

My reason is when I have a system with 2 ethernet cards I used to have to specify the order of loading. Like: install e1000e /sbin/modprobe forcedeth; /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install e1000e

So I used to grep for eth0 and eth1 do get the module names from modprobe.conf.

You should specify the MAC address of the NIC in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethX like this:

HWADDR=90:E6:BA:74:E5:E6

This is the proper way to do it since at least CentOS 5. Also works in case you use 2 NICs that use the same driver.

HTH, Deyan

On Thursday, November 11, 2010 11:20:47 am Jerry Geis wrote:

So I used to grep for eth0 and eth1 do get the module names from modprobe.conf.

How do I get that information in RHEL 6 since it doesnt seem to be there.

Thanks, (just trying to prepare)

I would think it would work like Fedora 12+; load a F12/13/14 up and start looking. For that matter, CentOS 5 also, as HWADDR has been supported for a long time (in the ifcfg-ethX files in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts).

Using a recursive grep for eth0 in /etc on my F14 laptop, I find: udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules:SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:15:c5:aa:bb:cc", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth0"

So it looks like udev is doing these assignments, and by MAC address rather than bus enumeration (a mixed blessing!).

I also see: sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0:DEVICE="eth0" so that mechanism is still there.