Re: Setting up the network interface on Linux domU

[Luke S Crawford <lsc%prgmr.com@localhost>]

Damian Sobczak <damian.sobczak%gmail.com@localhost> writes:

> On my Debian installation I have the network interface specified
> 
> 
> iface eth2 inet dhcp
> 
> 
> but on the Debian domU it's eth16, after each reboot or shutdown it's
> a different interface number.


this is because you didn't specify a mac=  in your vif=[''] statement.  
put a vif=['MAC=XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX'] (where X is valid hex chars) and the eth 
will stop incrementing.

the idea is that when debian sees a new NIC, it wires it down to the mac
address using udev.  If you don't specify a mac in the config file, xen
will automatically assign a random mac address; a different mac every time 
you reboot.    So every time debian reboots, it's seeing a new network card,
and wiring that down to the next available eth interface.  
 
(if you want, you can also look into the debian udev scripts and prevent it 
from locking down the eth, but I just lock down the mac on all my DomUs.)