netdev= kernel boot commands and the Intel e1000 nic

From: Alex Upton
Date: Thu Mar 10 2005 - 15:37:05 EST


Hello All,

For about 3.5 days now I've been trying to swap eth0 and eth1 devices
through use of the netdev kernel boot switch.

The scenario:

We have a system with onboard NICS and a PCI Intel e1000 Fiber NIC
installed. This particular system by default forces the NIC inside the
PCI slot to always default to eth0. We want to have ultimate control as
to which NIC is deemed worthy enough to become eth0. We are using an
entirely monolithic kernel via a PXE driven build and prefer not to
support use of modules.

Reading through the kernel-parameters.txt I found the "netdev=" command
which suggests the following usage:

netdev= NET] Network devices parameters
Format: <irq>,<io>,<mem_start>,<mem_end>,<name>
Note that mem_start is often overloaded to mean
something different and driver-specific.

We have tried the following methods based on this info and other peoples
examples found in google land without success.

netdev=21,0x2800,0xf6fa,0xf6fd,eth1
netdev=21,0x2800,0xf6fa0000,0xf6fd0000,eth1
netdev=21,0x2800,1,32,eth1
netdev=irq=21,io=0x2800,name=eth1

We have also tried to use "nameif" as a second approach, unfortunately
nameif seems to be limited to only having the capability to change any
logical Ethernet device name other than eth0.

We've even attempted use of the "pci=" commands with hopes of reversing
the PCI search order, and forced bios values, again without success.

If anyone has any suggestions or insight on how to work with netdev and
the e1000 properly it would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks very much
-Alex

Alex.upton@xxxxxxxxxxx



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