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Re: [LUG] ethXX device keeps incrementing?!

 

On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:48:17 +0100
Grant Sewell wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> Not really an issue, more of a question... why does my LAN device keep
> increasing?  This is on my laptop (which still doesn't sleep/hibernate
> nicely).  Everytime I reboot it I get a different ethXX number for my
> LAN interface.  Right now I'm on eth74.  Yesterday I was on eth69.
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> Grant.

I've had a little look around, and it would seem the issue is that
nForce chipsets report the MAC address backwards - so presumably
that means a MAC of 01:23:45:67:89:AB would be reported as
BA:98:76:54:32:10
- and something in Linux can't handle it (maybe the forcedeth module)
  so invents a udev rule that creates a new eth device with a
  somewhatrandom MAC address.

I have to say that I hadn't noticed it before I "upgraded" from 8.04.2
to 9.04.

Grant.

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