On Fri, 19 Aug 2016, O'Neal, Miles wrote:

> I long ago quit trusting the OS to bring devices up in any given order. No 
> matter what I did, eventually a new kernel found a way around it. I forcibly 
> associate MAC addresses with device names. It's the only road to sanity.

Yes, I have found that it all works well at SL7 if you use MAC addresses, and
avoid using ethX for device naming, using instead some other name like netX.
Then you don't need to do any special udev operations.

The kernel and udev do not play well together if you insist on using
ethX for naming at SL7.

We also disable biodevname - thus we pxeboot with:
    biosdevname=0
in the kernel arguments, and avoid installing the biosdevname RPM; it is
not very useful, expecially on older systems.

Thus our device names are assigned using ifcfg-netX configuration
files; e.g.:

# pwd
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts

# for i in ifcfg-net? ; do
> echo $i:
> cat $i
> echo ""
> done

ifcfg-net0:
BOOTPROTO=static
DEVICE=net0
HWADDR=00:21:28:10:4d:42
IPADDR=192.168.1.76
MTU=9000
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet

ifcfg-net1:
DEVICE=net1
HOTPLUG=no
HWADDR=00:21:28:10:4d:43
ONBOOT=no

ifcfg-net2:
DEVICE=net2
HOTPLUG=no
HWADDR=00:21:28:10:4d:44
ONBOOT=no

ifcfg-net3:
DEVICE=net3
HOTPLUG=no
HWADDR=00:21:28:10:4d:45
ONBOOT=no

cheers, etc.
-- 
deatrich @ triumf.ca, Science/ATLAS         PH: +1 604-222-7665
<*> This moment's fortune cookie:
   "The avalanche has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote."
     -Kosh, B5