[PLUG] Forcing numbering of ethernet interfaces?

[Derek Loree]

On Fri, 2002-09-13 at 12:58, Terry Griffin wrote:
> 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.

Why can't you build the SCSI drivers into the kernel?  Works well for my
SCSI based systems.

> But you give me an idea. Can I make a custom initrd that makes things
> come out in the right order?

I don't know if this can be done or not.

Derek