[arch-general] Why does network interface sometimes change name?

[Rodrigo Rivas]

On Mon, Apr 6, 2015 at 5:36 PM, Felix E. Klee <felix.klee at inka.de> wrote:
> I am running Arch as a guest in VMware Player on Win7X64. On every odd
> boot, the name of the network interface changes. Sometimes it is:
>
>     eno16777736
>
> Sometimes it is:
>
>     eth0
>
> This makes it really hard to configure a fixed IP, which I do by
> having in `/etc/dhcpcd.conf`:
>
>     interface eno16777736
>     static ip_address=192.168.101.10/24
>     static routers=192.168.101.2
>     static domain_name_servers=192.168.101.2
>
> I have to change back and forth the interface name in that configuration file.

It is probably caused by those fancy Predictable Network Interface
Names [1], that in your case become unpredictable.

Just do:

# ln -s /dev/null /etc/udev/rules.d/80-net-setup-link.rules

And you will get the good old "eth0" every time. Unless you have more
than one network interface, of course... If that is the case you can
use the MAC address to build the interface name, but I forgot the
details...

[1]: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/PredictableNetworkInterfaceNames/