iproute

[wmstudio]

Carla,

Somewhere I read about assigning aliases or labels to network devices using iproute, in an article you wrote about iptables. But I can't find it anymore. Can you help me out and point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance

[Carla Schroder]

Are these what you are looking for:
http://www.enterprisenetworkingplane...le.php/3510966
http://www.enterprisenetworkingplane...le.php/3512836
iproute doesn't assign aliases the way ifconfig does, but 'real' multiple interface names, if that's what you're thinking of.

[wmstudio]

Originally Posted by Carla Schroder

Are these what you are looking for:
http://www.enterprisenetworkingplane...le.php/3510966
http://www.enterprisenetworkingplane...le.php/3512836
iproute doesn't assign aliases the way ifconfig does, but 'real' multiple interface names, if that's what you're thinking of.

Thanks, but I already found these articles. It has something to do with setting up iptables and instead of using names like 'eth0', 'eth1', etc you could assign additional more meaningful names to make a iptables script 'more' readable.

[Carla Schroder]

Yum, iptables! Perhaps this will help:
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/...appliance5.htm

There are links in the article to complete example iptables scripts. Lemme know if you have any questions.

[wmstudio]

Originally Posted by Carla Schroder

Yum, iptables! Perhaps this will help:
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/...appliance5.htm

There are links in the article to complete example iptables scripts. Lemme know if you have any questions.

No that wasn't the article either. But that's alright, I already found the answer or rather the syntax:

ip link set dev eth0 down
ip link set dev eth0 name wan0
ip link set dev internet0 up

actually renaming the device to a more meaningful name. The funny thing is that you won't find the new name with ifconfig. You'll see the new name using ip link show. You used this in one of your iptables articles... About iptables, I got myself a good book: 'Linux Firewalls, third edition' published by Novell. BTW have you heard of a tool called 'fwbuilder', a program for building firewall scripts. It targets iptables, ipfilter, pf and Cisco PIX

There's also a nice article about renaming network interfaces in
http://www.science.uva.nl/research/a...InterfaceNames
This article deals with the seemingly random way linux names the devices. The article starts with:

One of the problems of Linux is that the order of the network interfaces is unpredictable. Between reboots it usually stays the same, but often after an upgrade to a new kernel or the addition or replacement of a network card (NIC) the order of all network interfaces changes. For example, what used to be eth0 now becomes eth1 or eth2 or visa versa.

[Carla Schroder]

Dang, that's a great article. The accepted modren method is to use udev rules, though everything in that article works fine. Red Hat has an easy way; you can put the MAC address right in the interface config file and that will nail it down:

DEVICE=eth0
HWADDR=11:22:33:44:55:66

You can give it any DEVICE name you want, like DEVICE=fred, and then remember to rename the config file:
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-fred

heh, a lot of fuss over a simple, fundamental task!