Network Device name changes occur after Dynamic Logical Partition Operations (DLPAR)

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 4 (SLES 11 SP4)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 Service Pack 1 (SLES 12 SP1)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 Service Pack 2 (SLES 12 SP2)

Situation

PCI hotplug of the Network Interface Card (NIC) results in the interface name changing.

Resolution

To avoid NIC name changes with automatically generated network interface names, create a custom udev rule that allows setting NIC names based on generic PCI addresses with wildcard domains by editing the "/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules" file.

Cause

The change to the interface name can occur due to the relation between the PCI address and the interface names.

Additional Information

The below is an example udev rule that can be used to add entries for PCI devices that should be mapped to network interfaces:

SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0",KERNELS=="*:01:00.0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth1"

Observe the PCI address in the form of *:01:00.0, meaning its first component (called domain, 4-digit value) is stated as a wildcard expression.

Disclaimer

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