From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040803 Description of problem: I am using a thinkpad T21 with builtin nic (Ethernet Pro 100 according to lspci), which claims eth0 using the e100 driver. I also have a pcmcia US Robotics wireless card that uses the orinoco_cs driver. If I insert the wireless card before enabling the wired ethernet, the wireless driver claims eth0, but fails to function. If I then remove the wireless card and run "ifconfig", the mac address of the wired eth0 is displayed, but without any of the usual statistics (RX packets, TX packets, etc...). If I then enable the card with "ifconfig eth0 up" and insert the wireless card, the wireless card claims eth1 (as it should) and works correctly. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 2.6.8-1.521 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.boot machine 2.insert wireless card 3. Actual Results: wireless card fails to function, claiming a device name already in use by builtin card (eth0) Expected Results: device claims device name eth1 and works correctly Additional info: /etc/modprobe.conf has a line: alias eth0 e100
I have similar problems with a T30 laptop. The difference is that my wireless is built-in (Prism 2.5) so I cannot "pop out" the card !!! This problem is critical because it causes networking to fail, or become funky, with little recourse to fixing it. (for example, when wired networking moves to eth1, software locked using FlexLM no longer recognizes the MAC address on eth0). I would like to provide some additional clues: 1. Per newsgroups, it seems to be affected by *availability of nearby wireless networks*. I have struggled most of this afternoon trying to get the wired connection back onto eth0. Finally, i pulled the plug on my wireless router and it *immediately* went back to normal behavior. I rebooted a couple of times and it solidly remained on eth0. 2. Regression test - I plugged the wireless base stn. back in and rebooted. kudzu did not do anything out of the ordinary. 3. I see that there are also submitted bugs about the Prism2.5 card showing up as "Ethernet" preventing proper choice of a driver and proper initialization of wireless settings. I have that too. 4. system-config-network also insists on displaying "eth2" with the Intel EtherExpress/ 100 driver. I never put it there, and eth2 doesn't show up in kudzu -p but somebody wrote it into modprobe.conf.
system-config-network should be binding interfaces to NICs based upon their MAC address. This doesn't look like a kernel bug.
Jim Snow: You should execute system-config-network and bind the interface name to the MAC address!