On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 12:47 PM, <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote: > >>>>> The problem is when you clone a disk and ship it to a location with >>>>> 'hands-on' support that doesn't know linux to install in a new chassis >>>>> that will arrive there at the same time. Somehow you have to get >>>>> someone to put the 4 network cables in the right NICs before anything >>>>> can connect. With things tied to MAC addresses that you don't know >>>>> ahead of time, nothing will work. > <snip> >>>> We have to go through contortions >>>> plugging on cable in at a time, doing an 'ifconfig up' and checking >>>> which interface shows link up. And the people doing that part wish >>>> we used more windows instead of Linux. >>> >>> ifconfig up? Not ethtool eth? >> >> You have to do both. Link won't come up until you ifconfig up the >> device - which of course is difficult when you don't know its name... > > I don't think so - pretty sure I was just using ethtool eth? the other > week, to try to figure out the name of the port that I'd plugged the patch > cord into. I *know* that the ones with nothing in them weren't up (and > yes, obviously, I was at the console). Maybe something else had already probed them. I'm pretty sure that if you bring up a system where all of the udev rules and ifcfg- files have the wrong MAC addresses, none of the links will come up. With CentOS5 you could use mii-tool to enumerate the interfaces and show link. I think the best I've found with 6 is to use 'ip link ls' to show the names, then one at a time 'ifconfig up' each name and then use ethtool to check for link. All very awkward to describe to a windows admin over the phone. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com