How to ensure that PCI card is assigned desired eth number

Hello,

I am going to give a try migrating from Cisco to Linux routing.

The first question is wether there exists a way to ensure that a PCI card is assigned the desired device number? Is that possible always to reference an embedded ethernet card as eth0, ethernet card in the first slot as eth1 and so on?

In other words: I would like to find out how a chain

segment -- card in a slot -- logical device -- ip

is guaranteed in the Linux world?

Thank you
Gene

this may help:-
http://rtfm.dyndns.info/tips/2000/04/05/4.shtml

have fun
nerderello

Hello,

May be the question would better read like this:

according to the Network administrator Guiqe, Ethernet-How To, and Mini-HowTo on using multiple Ethercards with Linux (http://www.scyld.com/expert/multicard.html)

<There is one caveat: these rules define which driver will be loaded when a interface name is referenced. They do not assign an interface name. Adapters will still be named in order. For example, if you have only the line

alias eth5 tulip,

and run ifconfig eth5 the tulip driver will be loaded. If it finds an adapter, the interface will be named "eth0" not "eth5">

This was said about modular drivers. And what about drivers that were compiled into the kernel?

How a network administrator could be sure that a particular ethernet card attached to certain network segment would receive the same eth number and would be assigned a correct ip address by ifconfig (eventually) each time during router boot?

Thank you
Gene

I would just compile the drivers as modulesand load them in the order I wanted them to be.

Yeh as long as nothing changes they should be assinged to the same device each time.

Hello,

Does it mean we should rely entirely on how kernel ethernet cards probing works? Is sequential numbering of the cards inevitable and out of any control?

For comparison: in Cisco each card is assigned device number which is its bus/slot number in essence. That is your configuration and routitng scheme do not change for the rest of cards when one of the cards is added or removed.

Thank you
Gene

I guess you could assine the card an IRQ in the BIOS this is normaly done for you and the IRQ wont change unless you move it to another PCI slot that is why it should not matter in your case as long as you dont move the cards the IRQ should not change hence the device name shouldnt.