[olug] Changing eth0 & eth1 around (in linux, of course!)

Don E. Kauffman dkauffman at tconl.com
Sat Oct 5 02:35:48 UTC 2002


Howdy,

I've had a problem with the networking on the linux box. I have a TLAN (eth0) 
built in -- and it does not seem to be functioning anymore -- along with a 
D-link (eth1)  I spent all day yesterday off the net trying to figure out how 
I could reconfigure the system to have the D-Link be eth0 and assign eth1 to 
TLAN.  I ffinally noticed in the man page on dhcpcd  that I could change the 
interface that dhcp was "attached" to. Hence I am now able to connect again!!

Is there a way to flipflop the two interfaces? Here's what I've tried so far.

1. Changed the aliases in modules.conf from this 
alias eth0 tlan
alias eth1 8139too

to this 
alias eth0 8139too
alias eth1 tlan

and rebooted the machine. dmesg showed that it was still regarding the tlan 
as eth0.

2. Used the network configuration GUI in RH 7.2 to reconfigure the tlan to 
eth1. Looked at the ifconfig output for eth0 and it shows tlan.

3. recompiled the kernel to compile the ethernet modules separately trom the 
kernel. (I compiled the RH7.2  2.4.9-34 version of the kernel.)

4. On reboot, dmesg still shows the system as setting eth0 to the tlan.

5. I modprobed the respective modules into the kernel and found I had to 
re-configure the routing tables. The RH network confiuguration GUI shows that 
the tlan is eth1 and the D-Link as eth0. (I'm beginning to thiink that 
particular tool bears only a faint resemblence to reality . . .)

It's not a big deal if I can't get the tlan setup as eth1 now that I know I 
can get the same results by having dhcp interface with the D-Link on eth1 but 
it would be nice to know if I'm missing anything, So please make suggestions 
or, at least, let me know if what I want to do isn't possible.

Thanks!

Don Kauffman



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