Mr Gigabit and Mr Wifi are fighting, and I need your help
Posts: 959
My laptop has 2 built-in network devices, a gigabit lan and a wireless connection and they are always changing their names.
One day, Mr Wifi is calling himself eth0, and the next, he's calling himself eth1. The problem is, Mr Gigabit, the more promiscuous of the two, sometimes jumps into Mr Wifi's place and assumes the name eth0, which means Mr Wifi is left with eth1, but the real problem is, I'm left on the outside wondering who is who. While this may not appear to matter much because both can perform quite well no matter which name they choose, it does cause me some distress because I need them both to work within specific boundaries and not to change their names.
Sometimes, I need to post a file to Mr Wifi at his last known address, but because Mr Gigabit has taken his address, the parcel never makes it and gets lost in transit. That's not normally a great loss because the parcel can be easily re-posted, but it is an inconvenience.
I need help to stop this in-fighting by giving them both some boundaries and ownership of their responsibilities based on their various strengths, but I dont really know how to. I have been told I could edit the /etc/network/interfaces file to pin each one down by their mac addresses to a specific name, but I just can't seem to understand how to do it and this is the area I need help with. I just need somebody to show me in simple terms how to pin each device using its mac address to either eth0 or eth1.
The reason I want to set static addresses is because I connect to 2 different networks, each with their own set of shared folders and printers every day, and while SM is quite capable of finding any machine on the current network by name, this process can be quite slow. I have found that replacing the name with an IP address is much faster in every respect, but with so many machines popping in and out of one of the networks, mine being one of them, I'd like to pin each regular machine down to a single ip address by changing settings on the router/switch and leave the machines to think they are getting their addresses by dhcp. Problem with this is, for some unknown reason, SM does not play ball, and I think it's related to the name swapping.
This way, I can browse any share on either network quickly and easily. I have found after pinning a machine down by it's mac address to a single ip address, browsing smb shares by name becomes about 20 times faster than when using full dhcp. Don't ask me why, I can't tell you, but for me, it just works.
I do have some control over both networks, so I have set them up to be essentially the same as far as SSID and authentication are concerned. This was necessary because since SM3.3-1, wireless roaming has lost some (read ALL) of it's ease of use and having to manually enter in a different SSID twice a day was starting to become quite tiresome.
Sorry to put you to sleep with my extended rave, but when you awake, do you think you could give me a hand with this one?
Mike P
I'm not sure it's my hardware only
Posts: 959
I install Mepis as a dual boot onto every new computer I build and almost every laptop that comes through our shop, and I have found this name swapping to be true for a number of laptops with built-in wireless. Most laptops I work with that have built in wireless tend to be set up with eth0 and eth1 with Mepis, but all those where I have to use a pcmcia card are set up with wlan0, so these are never affected.
All I need to know is how to pin a hardware address to a device name like eth0 or eth1.
Mike P
I'm not sure it's my hardware only
Posts: 2280
Wondering if manually setting the resources for these devices in in the bios would lock them in or at least a little more consistent. Not familiar with later laptops and dont even know if its doable , just a thought....
jim
It might help if we knew your HW
Posts: 316
For example, on PCs with the broadcom chip, Mepis v6 is loading the wrong driver. a simple correction of blacklisting that driver seems to correct the situation. A number of laptops use broadcom. Other HW may require other action.
Read node 9899, Wireless Networking Won't Work. Look for Adam Henry's solution second from the end of a very long thread.
Mine uses the atheros chip
Posts: 959
Thanks Light9. I'll see if I can interpret the differences and try the solution. I would never have thought to go into that thread to find a possible work-around for my issue because mine connects every time without fail.
In response to James and for the benefit of others, more and more laptop manufacturers these days are giving less options in the Bios. HP & Compaq have always de-tuned their systems (desktops included) and locked out certian features form showing in the bios for all of their machines.
Acer for a time did not allow any other boot CD's other than their own restore CD to boot some of their laptops, even when the bios was set to boot from cd first, unless the MBR on the HDD was corrupt or it couldn't find that bug ridden infestation they call XP, so I kindly informed their top level techs about this and they let up a little.
Toshiba's restore disks reset the Bios before doing anything else and somewhere in their manufacture and they appear to have hard coded them to hide the last fat32 partition on their hard disks on some of their machines. What a bunch of complete plonkers! Give us back the control of our systems and NO, we don't want this pathetic thing called XP.
Mike P
Tell us about your hardware.
Posts: 316
This problem may very well be hardware-specific.