[syslinux] Network Interface

[Dag Wieers]

On Thu, 8 Jul 2010, Dimitris Giatsios wrote:

> I'm booting a number of PCs through PXE from a server and then these nodes
> mount a common root filesystem (voyage distribution) located on the server
> over NFS.
>
> My problem is the following:
>
> I want all of the network interface names of the PCs to be the same (e.g.
> eth0 or something else), but some of them appear as eth0 and others as eth1.
> I've tried using udev, but it won't work because, after the filesystem is
> mounted, the interface is already up and running and can't be renamed.
>
> I came across the following webpage, where in the last link an approach
> using the GRUB or LILO boot configuration files is described (based on IRQ)
>
> --> www. science.uva.nl/research/air/wiki/LogicalInterfaceNames
>
> I wonder if I can use this with PXE as well, that is, if I can configure the
> PXE boot configuration file to assign a name to a network interface based on
> the IRQ or memory address value.
> If it is possible, can someone tell me what the syntax is in the case of
> PXE?

That link does not work for me. Our solution was to have a very strict 
patching policy with pictures of the different hardware models indicating 
what cables should be patches to what NIC. (Usually this was based on the 
PCI bus order/numbering)

Then based on the models we would influence the driver-order by providing 
(Anaconda) a set of drivers so we would make sure a specific NIC would 
come up as eth0. We couldn't use PXE (for security reasons we were not 
allowed ???).

Nowadays using lua I hope this can be done by simply quering DMI 
information (or even PCI bus information/modules.dep as hdt is providing 
us already) and providing information to Anaconda based on that.

That would be my prime reason for making looking at lua :-)

-- 
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
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