[eepro100] Multiple nics in a box

Donald Becker becker@scyld.com
Tue, 10 Apr 2001 20:52:05 -0400 (EDT)


On Wed, 11 Apr 2001, Yves Cognet wrote:
> We are running RedHat 7.0 on CA810E with several Intel NICs (2 or 3
> Ethernet connections). On NIC is onboard and we get one or two Intel PCI
> cards. We would like for commodity to force eth0 to be the onboard NIC
> whatever is the configuration.

Why?  If you need a specific card to map to a designated IP address you
can write a script to do that.

> At the present time , it is always the
> last detected one (either eth1 or eth2).

That is the correct behavior.
 PCI adapters are detected in PCI order.

 On-board devices are always given a higher index, usually on PCI bus 0.
 This is done so that plug-in devices are used in preference to the
 on-board device.  This rationale is easier to understand if you think
 of a video card or disk controller overriding a flawed on-board device.

> We 've tried several options to
> force the kernel to scan the PCI bus the other way, but we didn't get
> the expected  sequence.

Write your own scan routine.
After you think through the issue, you'll come to the same conclusion we
did.


Donald Becker				becker@scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Second Generation Beowulf Clusters
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993