Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 15:10:40 +0200 From: "Michael Nottebrock" <michaelnottebrock@gmx.net> To: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, <michael@tenzo.com>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Naming ethernet NICs Message-ID: <009701c0c288$cfc4dce0$0508a8c0@lofi.dyndns.org> References: <000e01c0c24a$9c9edfc0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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----- Original Message ----- From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: <michael@tenzo.com>; <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2001 7:45 AM Subject: RE: Naming ethernet NICs > >-----Original Message----- > >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG > >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Michael O'Henly > > > >So if NICs are named on the basis of their type/driver, doesn't > >that mean a > >lot of reconfiguring is needed if you should happen to replace a card with > >something different? > > > > Let me point out that with regular PC hardware, you can't replace a NIC with > a different type without taking the server offline. Once you do that, all > of the benefits of "transparent reconfiguration" are basically lost. > > In any case, even if you do it differently and make everything "eth0, eth1, > etc. and so on, then how do you determine what physical card in the system > goes with what port? > > To give you an example, recently I built a router on a 486 with 5 separate > nics in them. Every NIC in the router is the same, (SMC8013) and > thus I had ed0, ed1, ed2, etc. On bootup, I still had to test each port to > determine which physical card went to what ed. One disadvantage of the BSD-type naming convention is that one does end up putting rl0's, ed0's and the like into config-files or batches, which have to be changed if the hardware changes, for example a '/usr/local/sbin/dhcpd dc0' in /etc/rc.local or a 'set device PPPoE:rl0' in /etc/ppp/ppp.conf, or (the most annoying) if you happen to have lots of 'via <interface>' statements in your ipfw ruleset. Greetings, Michael Nottebrock To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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