[CentOS] Renaming NIC name in CentOS 7

Fri Oct 3 13:12:48 UTC 2014
Richer, Mark (CIV) <mhricher at nps.edu>

All,

I am trying to understand better how you give an interface a more descriptive name and get it all working without a reboot, if possible.

We have 1G and 10G interfaces, and I’m trying to use names like 1G-internal, 1G-external, 10G-private, etc.  When I boot up, it’s all fine, but if I add one I’m not sure if there is a way to avoid the reboot? For example, I added the 10G interface names this week.

Specifically, is there a way to change the network interface name you see in ifconfig and nmcli connection without rebooting CentOS 7?

I changed the name in network-scripts. I tried to restart NetworkManager.

I brought down the interface and tried to rename the file and bring it up again, but it still retains the previous run-time setting associated with the same UUID in the file.

Also I find that on all but one of the server on which I did this, I can restart NetworkManager, but network.service is failing to restart. Do I want both active? And if yes,  is this indicative of a problem related to changing the interfaces that goes away (only) by rebooting? For some reason, after doing this on several systems, on only one I can restart network.service, but it also still shows the old interface name.

thanks,
Mark

MARK H RICHER, MS CS
NPS-NCR Digital Forensics Lab IT Manager
Computer Science Department
Naval Postgraduate School - National Capital Region (NCR)
900 N Glebe Rd, Rm 5-182, Arlington, VA 22203
571.858.3254 (o) 571.303.9498 (m) mhricher at nps.edu<mailto:mhricher at nps.edu>