[CentOS] Strange device labeling in 6.3

Scott Robbins scottro at nyc.rr.com
Thu Aug 9 18:31:22 UTC 2012


On Thu, Aug 09, 2012 at 12:33:43PM -0500, Richard Reina wrote:
> I have just installed 6.3 on a machine that was previously running
> 5.8. Under 5.8 eth0 was eth0. Now with 6.3 /sbin/ifconfig gives me lo,
> wlan0 and p4p1 (instead of eth0).  I would like to make the ethernet a
> static IP as I intend to for this to be machine used on my LAN only.
> However, when I do /usr/sbin/setup -> Network Configuration the device
> is not listed.  Can anyone tell me why this is happening and how I can
> fix it. Or if not how I can set a static and persistent IP address for
> the ethernet?


Well......

I tend to agree with the slashdot commentator who called it overcomplicated and unnecessary.   It's another idea from 
Fedora, the theory, IIRC, was that this way, devices would always have the same name, whereas under the 
method that has been used device names could change on a reboot.  (Haven't experienced that myself, but
dunno).

If you google Fedora biosdevname you'll come across various explanations.  To change it back once the thing's been installed, I've always 
done it by first rpm -e biosdevname, then editing /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-whatever, changing the device
name in there to eth0, changing the name of the file, e.g, ifcfg-p4p1 to ifcfg-eth0 and 
restarting.  I haven't gotten it working by just restarting networking, but at any rate, if you 
know you don't want it during installation, you can add biosdevname=0 to the command line.


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Scott Robbins
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