Changing NIC in existing Server results in no ETH0

[Keith Steensma]

I have never seen this addressed in the mailing list, so I'll have to
ask for help

I have a sever that has been running for months with a single Realtek
8139 network card.  The NIC failed and I put in a 3Com 3C905B-TX card
(that I pulled from a working test machine).  When I rebooted the
server, the 3Com card was no configured and I ended up with no ETH0
(rather important since there is on one NIC in the server).  The correct
module is compiled in the (stock) kernel.  I even tried putting the
driver name into the /etc/modules file but that didn't work either.

I took the same machine with a different (spare) hard drive and
installed Lenny from the InstallCD and the 3Com NIC was found and
configured.  The ETH0 worked fine, but not with the original Debian
install (that was on the server).

What is it that the install routine does that finds the NIC's.  Is this
a command line (something) that can (should) be run manually

Thanks,  Keith


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[Florian Kulzer-3]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 09:37:19 -0500, Keith Steensma wrote:

> I have never seen this addressed in the mailing list, so I'll have to  
> ask for help
>
> I have a sever that has been running for months with a single Realtek  
> 8139 network card.  The NIC failed and I put in a 3Com 3C905B-TX card  
> (that I pulled from a working test machine).  When I rebooted the  
> server, the 3Com card was no configured and I ended up with no ETH0  
> (rather important since there is on one NIC in the server).  The correct  
> module is compiled in the (stock) kernel.  I even tried putting the  
> driver name into the /etc/modules file but that didn't work either.
>
> I took the same machine with a different (spare) hard drive and  
> installed Lenny from the InstallCD and the 3Com NIC was found and  
> configured.  The ETH0 worked fine, but not with the original Debian  
> install (that was on the server).
>
> What is it that the install routine does that finds the NIC's.  Is this  
> a command line (something) that can (should) be run manually

either

- the kernel in Lenny is newer and has a driver that is missing (or not
  fully functional for your hardware) on the other system

or

- the new card was assigned eth1 because the previous card's mac address
  is still listed in the database of persistent ethernet device names

Boot the problematic system and run "/sbin/ifconfig". If you see the
3Com NIC listed as eth1 then you can edit the file

/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

to assign eth0 to it. (Remove or comment out the entry for the old NIC.)

--
Regards,            | http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
          Florian   |


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[Nyizsnyik Ferenc-3]

On Mon, 13 Oct 2008 09:37:19 -0500
Keith Steensma <kas@...> wrote:

> I have never seen this addressed in the mailing list, so I'll have to
> ask for help
>
> I have a sever that has been running for months with a single Realtek
> 8139 network card.  The NIC failed and I put in a 3Com 3C905B-TX card
> (that I pulled from a working test machine).  When I rebooted the
> server, the 3Com card was no configured and I ended up with no ETH0
> (rather important since there is on one NIC in the server).  The
> correct module is compiled in the (stock) kernel.  I even tried
> putting the driver name into the /etc/modules file but that didn't
> work either.
>
> I took the same machine with a different (spare) hard drive and
> installed Lenny from the InstallCD and the 3Com NIC was found and
> configured.  The ETH0 worked fine, but not with the original Debian
> install (that was on the server).
>
> What is it that the install routine does that finds the NIC's.  Is
> this a command line (something) that can (should) be run manually
>
> Thanks,  Keith
>

 
ethx devices always correspond to the one NIC they were created for.
Your new NIC is working as eth1, I assume.

--
Nyizsa.
http://nyizsa.uni.cc


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[Steve Kemp]

On Mon Oct 13, 2008 at 16:55:06 +0200, Nyizsnyik Ferenc wrote:

> > What is it that the install routine does that finds the NIC's.  Is
> > this a command line (something) that can (should) be run manually

> ethx devices always correspond to the one NIC they were created for.
> Your new NIC is working as eth1, I assume.

  Indeed, I'd suspect udev is the culprit here.  If it is your
 device will appear if you run "ifconfig -a".

  If that is the case take a look beneath /etc/udev.d/rules.d/ and
 you'll find the old device + MAC address recorded away.

Steve
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[Jochen Spieker]

Keith Steensma:
>
> I have a sever that has been running for months with a single Realtek  
> 8139 network card.  The NIC failed and I put in a 3Com 3C905B-TX card  
> (that I pulled from a working test machine).  When I rebooted the  
> server, the 3Com card was no configured and I ended up with no ETH0  

This is a feature. ;-) Udev (the program that dynamically creates device
nodes) tries to always assign the same device name to the same physical
device. In the case of network devices it does that by remembering all
NICs' MAC addresses. Since your new NIC has a different MAC from the old
one, udev assigned another device name to it. You probably have eth1 now
and you can see it when running 'ifconfig -a'.

If you want to udev forget what it knows about NICs it has seen (and
make your new NIC eth0), just move the file
/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules out of the way. It will be
re-created by udev upon reboot.

J.
--
I will not admit to failure even when I know I am terribly mistaken and
have offended others.
[Agree]   [Disagree]
                 <http://www.slowlydownward.com/NODATA/data_enter2.html>

[Eduardo M KALINOWSKI-4]

Jochen Schulz escreveu:
> This is a feature. ;-) Udev (the program that dynamically creates device
> nodes) tries to always assign the same device name to the same physical
> device.

Except for hard drivers, where it tends to do exactly the opposite. :-)

--
Eduardo M Kalinowski
eduardo@...


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