> Now I am wondering if it is hardware-related; I am > using a motherboard with integrated ethernet: SiS900 > PCI Fast Ethernet (rev 83)
Yeap, I have the same situation on a system with that chip. What happens is that eth0 and eth1 simply "swaps places" on some boots (integrated SiS900 and a Intel Etherexpress Pro 100S) i.e. it seem to initialize the devices in the wrong order sometimes. Personally I couldn't be bothered in finding a real solution, so I just scripted to have the system reboot if eth0 did not come up with the MAC-address it was supposed to have. Ugly solution, but workable.. change MAC's as needed. #!/bin/bash ETH0MAC="AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA" REALMAC0="$(/sbin/ifconfig | grep eth0 | awk '$0 ~ /HWaddr/ {print $NF}')" ETH1MAC="BB:BB:BB:BB:BB:BB" REALMAC1="$(/sbin/ifconfig | grep eth1 | awk '$0 ~ /HWaddr/ {print $NF}')" if [ "$ETH0MAC" != "$REALMAC0" ] then echo "REBOOTING DUE TO MAC MISSMATCH" sleep 3 /sbin/reboot fi if [ "$ETH1MAC" != "$REALMAC1" ] then echo "REBOOTING DUE TO MAC MISSMATCH" sleep 3 /sbin/reboot fi