[NTLUG:Discuss] Bringing up a network interface on SuSE 10.1

[Leroy Tennison]

Chris Cox wrote:
> Leroy Tennison wrote:
>> SuSE has (to me) this irritating characteristic of creating 
>> ifcfg-eth-id-<MAC address> files rather than ifcfg-eth0.  The problem is 
>> when the NIC changes (actually the host hardware and thus the embedded 
>> NIC, I moved a hard drive between machines).  I found the MAC address of 
>> the "new" NIC in dmesg and created ifcfg-eth-id-<"new" MAC address> but 
>> couldn't figure out how to bring it up.  Tried:
>>
>> ifup eth0
>> 	but eth0 doesn't exist because the ifcfg... didn't exist at boot
>> ifup <"new" MAC address>
>> 	couldn't find it even though 'man ifup' said this would work
>> ifup <PCI identifier>
>> 	couldn't find it even though 'man ifup' said this would work
>>
>> I finally resorted to reboot which brought it up (but as eth4, not sure 
>> why).
>>
>> How do I bring up a NIC after boot that isn't detected at boot?  Please 
>> don't say yast, I want to understand how to do it - not have the 
>> knowledge hidden behind an interface.
> 
> yast is the sysadmin tool for openSUSE.  IMHO, you might be better
> off with a distribution that forces you to do everything by hand...
> if you really want to learn how to do things.  With that said, a
> tool like yast can hide things because the setup is more than
> a bit complicated.... thus there is usually an easier way, but not
> necessarily a "complete" way of doing things (yast attempts to account
> for many interdependent operations that most people are not likely
> to consider).
> 
> But... with that said, yast isn't the root of the problem here, though
> it is most certainly a victim (and thus a problem).
> 
> The problem is the new (non SUSE) hotplugging mechanism that we're
> all having to adopt known as udev.  You can fix the problem by removing
> all of the entries with regards to ethernet controllers from the file
> /etc/udev/rules.d/30-net_persistent_names.rules.  When you restart
> the detection will find just your new NIC and it will be at eth0.
> However, if yast matters to you, you may have to go into yast and
> delete out all of the nics and start over with configuration there...
> if yast is useful to you.... just to keep yast in sync with what
> is happening out there.
> 
> At initial interface config, yast does allow you to edit the
> name given to the /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth* name, however,
> when I tried this, it seemed to mess things up (10.2)... so
> maybe this is broken a bit.
> 
> If you must do things outside of the SUSE way... you can always
> create your own init scripts and do your own dhcp and network
> settings.  But trying to do all of the things that yast tries
> to do.... not sure if I'd want to try to figure all of that out.
> Obviously it is possible though, just have to read through the
> myriad of scripts that are invoked by /etc/init.d/network
> when starting interfaces and dhcp.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
Thanks for the reply, I certainly appreciate it.  However, after reading 
through what you said I agree with you, it's not worth it. The cure 
sounds worse than the disease.