[CentOS] is there a way to make the kernel see a new ethernet device without rebooting?

[Jon Detert]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Hodrien" <J.H.Hodrien at leeds.ac.uk>
> To: "CentOS mailing list" <centos at centos.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 9:08:09 AM
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] is there a way to make the kernel see a new ethernet device without rebooting?
> 
> On Tue, 27 Sep 2011, Jon Detert wrote:
> 
> > I have a VMWare ESX server with virtual machines running CentOS.  I
> > want to
> > add an ethernet interface to one of the CentOS virtual machines.
> >  VMWare
> > allowed me to add a virtual NIC to the CentOS virtual machine while
> > it was
> > running.  However, the CentOS o.s. cannot see the new NIC.  Is
> > there a
> > command I can run to make the kernel aware of the new ethernet
> > device?  I
> > don't want to reboot the CentOS o.s. if I don't have to
> 
> Adding a NIC to VMWare with a CentOS 6 guest (e1000) works just fine
> here.  I


Adding the NIC in VMWare works fine for me too.  It's just that the guest
(CentOS) o.s. doesn't see the new NIC unless/until I reboot it.


> don't remember there being any problems with CentOS 5.
> 
> Does dmesg show evidence of the new device being attached?


No.

I wonder if it has to do with the type of NIC.  In my case, vmware says it's of
type 'flexible', and the CentOS o.s uses the 'pcnet32' driver for it.

- JD