If you regularly deploy Ubuntu VM templates on your VMware ESX(i) or VMware vSphere boxes you will probably run into strange network device numbers. This is caused by a udev rule. This problem has been confirmed to exist in Ubuntu 9.04, 9.10 and 10.04. I haven’t had the time to check out other versions of Ubuntu. It’s also still existing in RHEL 6 and Scientific Linux 6.
As you can see below we have two ethernet devices: eth4 and eth5 instead of the usual eth0
and eth1.
root@box:~# ifconfig | grep Link lo Link encap:Local Loopback eth4 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr eth5 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr root@box:~#
Lucky for us it’s very simple to persistenly assign the correct device names to the corresponding mac address.
root@box:~# grep eth4 /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*",
ATTR{address}=="00:11:22:33:44:55", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0",
ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth4"
root@box:~#
Use your favorite editor to edit /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules.
Replace NAME=”eth4″ with NAME=”eth0″ and do the same with eth5.
Save the config file, reboot and you’re done!
Update:
After writing this guide I’ve also found this issue to exist on other udev-based distro’s (e.g. OpenSUSE) and other VMware products too (e.g. Fusion and Workstation). The same fix applies, so no worries there.
