Hi David, On 20.09.2012 [17:50:52 +0100], David Lee wrote: > Cobbler version: 2.0.11 (actually 2.0.11-2 from RPM) > All systems: RHEL 5.8 > > > [Preliminary: I realise our cobbler version is a little old. I'd > rather not have to upgrade right now, but if it really would make a > substantial difference to the problem I am about to describe, that > could be done.] > > We install RHEL 5.8 on many IBM boxes, which are all very similar. In > particular there are four ethernet ports on the system itself, and a > separate board with two 10-Gig ports. > > The first ethernet port is our provisioning network, over which > cobbler runs. During installation, it seems to call this "eth2". But > after installation it almost always comes up as "eth0". (That's OK > (although I don't understand it!) but it might interact slightly with > the real problem below.) Moving on... > > After installation, the four system ethernet ports usually get > assigned names eth0, eth1, eth2 and eth3, usually in order. (The > cobbler/provisioning interface seems to get "eth0" always.) The two > 10-Gig ports get assigned names eth4 and eth5... usually. > > But occasionally (perhaps 10% or slightly more) an installation ends > up with a different mapping of names to ports. (If we then > re-install, it usually gets the expected mapping.) That is a problem > when one is (re-)installing machines in a farm of machines that are > supposed to be the same.
So a couple of questions spring to mind. 1) Is the naming somehow critical to your application? I assume so, because I'm not sure why it's relevant otherwise. 2) If you want static naming of interfaces, I believe the right way of doing this is custom udev rules (which you might install via cobbler). 3) I think the normal way for this to work is to always use the MAC address to identify the physical port. > I realise that "cobbler system" has a "--interface" capability. But I > don't see a way for that to be used to map specific names to specific > hardware. > > I make no claims to understand the depths and intricacies of > "/etc/modprobe.conf", "/etc/sysconfig/hwconf", kudzu, etc. But is > there a way (or common practice) somehow to pre-populate various > things with relevant information for the mapping of generated "eth*" > names onto particular ethernet ports? This isn't really a Cobbler specific question, afaict. I would look into udev rules, probably, if relevant. Thanks, Nish _______________________________________________ cobbler mailing list cobbler@lists.fedorahosted.org https://lists.fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler
