[Mageia-dev] network interface renaming not working anymore

[Christiaan Welvaart]

hi,

When I finally rebooted a cauldron system that acts as a router, it turned 
out the network interfaces eth0 and eth1 were switched, exposing 
"internal" services to the outside world and leaving me without internet 
access. Syslog contains:
Aug 15 22:48:29 zem systemd-udevd[404]: error changing net interface name eth0 to eth1: File exists
Aug 15 22:48:29 zem systemd-udevd[404]: error changing net interface name eth1 to eth0: File exists

Of course this has worked for years, so it breaking is not something 
anyone would expect. It also seems to be unneeded. After some looking 
around I could (temporarily) fix it quite easily by adding:
         ifrename -i eth0 -n rename0
         ifrename -i eth1 -n rename1
         ifrename -i rename0
         ifrename -i rename1
to /etc/init.d/network and describing the mapping in /etc/iftab . 
So now I have two questions:
- Has anyone else seen this?
- What change is causing this: kernel, udev/systemd, or something else?

The network devices use the same driver so there is no other way to 
distinguish them than by MAC address or PCI ID.


     Christiaan