Support for biosdevname in Red Hat

Enterprise Linux 6.1

Summary
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 provides consistent network device naming for network
interfaces. This feature changes the name of network interfaces on a system in order to
make locating and differentiating the interfaces easier.

Description
Traditionally, network interfaces in Linux are enumerated as eth[0123...], but these names
do not necessarily correspond to actual labels on the chassis. Modern server platforms with
multiple network adapters can encounter non-deterministic and counter-intuitive naming of
these interfaces. This affects both network adapters embedded on the motherboard ("Lanon-Motherboard", or "LOM") and add-in (single and multiport) adapters.

This new naming convention assigns names to network interfaces based on their physical
location, whether embedded or in PCI slots. By converting to this naming convention,
system administrators will no longer have to guess at the physical location of a network port,
or modify each system to rename them into some consistent order.

This feature, implemented via the "biosdevname" program, will change the name of all
embedded network interfaces, PCI card network interfaces, and virtual function network
interfaces from the existing eth[0123...] to the new naming convention as shown:

Device

Old Name(s)

New biosdevname Name(s)

Embedded network interface (LOM)

eth[0123...]

em[1234...] *

PCI card network interface

eth[0123...]

p<slot>p<ethernet port> (ex: p3p4)

Virtual function

eth[0123...]

p<slot>p<ethernet port>_<virtual
interface>

* new enumeration starts at 1

Copyright (c) 2011 by Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Support for biosdevname in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1

System administrators may continue to write rules in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

to change the device names to anything desired; those will take precedence over this
physical location naming convention.

Systems Affected
Consistent network device naming is enabled by default for a set of Dell PowerEdge, C
Series and Precision Workstation systems. For more details regarding the impact on Dell
systems, please visit https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-47318.

For all other systems, it will be disabled by default (see "How It Works" and "How To Enable/
Disable" for more details.)

Regardless of the type of system, RHEL 6 guests running under RHEL 5 hosts will not have
devices renamed, since the virtual machine BIOS does not provide SMBIOS information.

Upgrades from RHEL 6.0 to RHEL 6.1 are unaffected. The old eth[0123...] naming
convention will continue to be used.

How It Works
biosdevname uses information from the system's BIOS, specifically the type 9 (System Slot)
and type 41 (Onboard Devices Extended Information) fields contained within the SMBIOS.
If the system's BIOS does not have SMBIOS version 2.6 or higher and this data, the new
naming convention will not be used. Most older hardware does not support this feature
because of a lack of BIOSes with the correct SMBIOS version and field information. For
BIOS or SMBIOS version information, please contact your hardware vendor.

For this feature to take effect, the biosdevname package must also be installed. The
biosdevname package is part of the "base" package group in RHEL 6.1. All install options,
except for "Minimal Install", include this package. It is not installed on upgrades of RHEL 6.0
to RHEL 6.1.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Support for biosdevname in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1

How To Enable/Disable
To disable this feature on Dell systems that would normally have it on by default, pass
"biosdevname=0" on the boot command line, both during and after installation.

To enable this feature on other system types that meet the minimum requirements (see
"How It Works"), pass "biosdevname=1" on the boot command line, both during and after
installation. Unless the system meets the minimum requirements, "biosdevname=1" will be
ignored and the system will boot with the traditional network interface name format.

If the "biosdevname" install option is specified, it must remain as a boot option for the
lifetime of the system.

Notes For Administrators

Many system customization files can include network interface names, and thus will require
updates if moving a system from the old convention to the new convention. If you use the
new naming convention, you will also need to update network interface names in areas such
as custom iptables rules, scripts altering irqbalance, and other similar configuration files.
Also, enabling this change for installation will require modification to existing kickstart files
that use device names via the "ksdevice" parameter; these kickstart files will need updated
to use the network device's MAC address or the network device's new name.

Red Hat strongly recommends that you consider this feature to be an install-time choice;
enabling or disabling the feature post-install, while technically possible, can be complicated
and is not recommended. For those system administrators who wish to do so, on a system
that meets the minimum requirements, remove the /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
file and the HWADDR lines from all /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-* files. In addition,
rename those ifcfg-* files to use this new naming convention. The new names will be in
effect after reboot. Remember to update any custom scripts, iptables rules, and service
configuration files that might include network interface names.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved.

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