Re: Ubuntu network cards.

Kurtis Peterson wrote:
> IIRC the system will always recognize the old card's configuration
> (IRQ's etc) as eth0 and unless you reinstall there's no easy way to make
> the new card eth1 .... that said you should find it easy to make your
> system default to eth1 ... I had no problems when I switched my notebook
> from eth0 (LAN) to eth1 (WLAN) from the
> System->Administration->Networking panel

There's two easy ways to force devices to have a specific order and have
the kernel recognize that card first.

1) Force the modules in the initramfs,
2) Physically change the order of the cards.

1) This will not work if the two devices use the same kernel modules.

I've had to do this when adding scsi devices to ensure the correct scsi
cards come up in the proper order. Basically you rebuild a custom
initramfs. It's fairly easy, but easy to muck up too. Basically, edit
the files, make sure you add all the necessary modules to the modules
file to ensure a clean boot (storage devices, file system for root, etc)
and add the networking card modules.

Create the new initramfs, add it lilo/grub and test it with a boot. If
it worked, then it'll have loaded and recognized a card first and it
will then be eth0.

As per normal, when mucking with the boot stuff, make sure you have
another kernel to boot into in case you forget the file system modules
or one of the modules for the storage devices.

2) If you have the two devices and same module, I've had great luck just
changing the order of the devices on the bus. i.e. If it's network, just
swap the PCI ports, if it's SCSI, just change which port on the card the
two devices go into.

Cheers,
lance

-- 
Lance Levsen,
Catprint Computing
Tel:  (306) 493-2249
Cell: (306) 230-8783
Blog: http://www.catprint.ca/blog/
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