Tying down network interfaces

[Freddie Cash]

On Dec 30, 2014 10:02 AM, "Martin Birgmeier" <la5lbtyi at aon.at> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I have two network interfaces as follows:
>
> sis0: <NatSemi DP8381[56] 10/100BaseTX> port 0xa400-0xa4ff mem
> 0xd5800000-0xd5800fff irq 9 at device 9.0 on pci0
> sis1: <NatSemi DP8381[56] 10/100BaseTX> port 0x9400-0x94ff mem
> 0xd4800000-0xd4800fff irq 11 at device 12.0 on pci0
>
> When sis0 breaks down, sis1 gets renumbered as sis0, wreaking havoc
> (mostly on my brains until I figure out which card is actually affected).
>
> How do I tie down these two interfaces so that they always stay as sis0
> and sis1, respectively, regardless of which ones are present in the
> system? - I expect to insert something into /boot/device.hints.

There was a recent thread on one of the lists about using devd to name USB
Ethernet devices based on their MAC or serial number. Something like that
should be useful for naming NICs something constant.

There's also a bug report for it with a working solution.

Cheers,
Freddie