Hi For years (long time) I had " net.ifnames=0 biosdevname=0 " and it worked as it should (6.X, 7.X) I never had any problems, until yesterday. I started upgrading my machines and I stopped after the first one showed issues and I will not update all the other ones until this is sorted. I have problems keeping the interfaces in order as I wanted them to be assigned to eth0, eth1 .. eth4 Every reboot the order of eth1, eth2 and eth3 change BUT eth0 stays. Now when I read this https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/networking_guide/sec-understanding_the_device_renaming_procedure then I am doing the correct thing by adding the MAC as in so: DEVICE=eth0 IPADDR=... ... GATEWAY=... ONBOOT=yes BOOTPROTO=none USERCTL=no NOZEROCONF=true TYPE=Ethernet NM_CONTROLLED=no HWADDR=01:23:45:67:78:9a This works for eth0 but all the other ones the kernel complains /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-eth: Device eth[1,2,3] has different MAC address than expected, ignoring NOTE: this worked until yesterday, I could reboot, update whatever it always came up in the same way and I also did not need to swap the network cables EVERY time ... Even without HWADDR/MAX adddress I have to swap the cables every time (eth[1,2,3]). Did something change in the kernel/networking/udev I am not aware of? What am I doing wrong all over sudden? Jobst -- Jobst Schmalenbach Programmer - an organism that turns coffee into software !