[PLUG] Forcing numbering of ethernet interfaces?

[Terry Griffin]

Derek Loree <derek at infotects.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2002-09-13 at 09:34, Terry Griffin wrote:
> > I think I know the answer to this which is "You can't do it" but
> > I'll ask anyway.
> > 
> > Got a machine running Red Hat 7.3 with three ethernet interfaces,
> > two on the PCI bus and one on the USB bus. The USB NIC is coming
> > up as eth0 and the PCI NIC's are coming up and eth1 and eth2.
> > We'd really rather have the PCI NIC's as eth0 and eth1 with the
> > USB NIC as eth2. This would make it consistent with the numbering
> > you get if you plug in the USB NIC after system boot. Is there a way
> > to force this?
> > 
> > Two ideas have come up so far. One was to try and force it via
> > alias settings in /etc/modules.conf and then disabling kudzu to
> > make sure it doesn't get modified during boot. This didn't do it.
> > 
> > The second idea which we've not tried yet is to build a kernel
> > with the PCI NIC drivers built in, but leave the USB NIC driver
> > built as a module. The non-module drivers ought to initialize
> > first thus giving them first shot at the interface numbers.
> 
> Seems like this has a pretty good chance of working.  The only other
> option I can think of is to disable initrd, and have the modules load in
> the order you want, not through aliases, but through the /etc/modules
> file.
> 

Booting without initrd is not an option. This is SCSI-based system.
But you give me an idea. Can I make a custom initrd that makes things
come out in the right order?

Terry
-- 
Terry Griffin <griffint at pobox.com>
http://www.blindchicken.com/~terryg/