On Monday, April 09, 2012 12:31:39 PM Konstantin Olchanski wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 09, 2012 at 10:40:02AM -0400, Lamar Owen wrote:
> >
> > ... and the current NetworkManager doesn't handle many production server networking tasks,
> > so upstream left the existing mechanism in place so choice is available.
> >
> 
> No, they have not. In SL6, they have removed the old graphical system-config-network tool,
> so either use nm-connection-editor or vi.

The 'existing mechanism' I refer to is the 'network' service and the older ifcfg-ethX files.  The assumption made in EL6 is that if you use a GUI you will use NetworkManager.

If you're not using a GUI it is assumed you know how to manually edit the files you need, including removed the HWADDR piece that binds to MAC address.  And while I've run afoul of this feature when cloning VM's and replacing network cards, I've also had this feature save things when the PCI enumeration order mysteriously changed during a minor kernel update on a previous EL version.  Even DSDT changes can cause bus enumeration order to change, and those can happen due to a BIOS upgrade or even due to user intervention.  I've personally done some DSDT manipulations for certain purposes before.

Again, I'm not saying I agree with this change, just saying that this is what the change is.