NICs being mapped with strange names that make no sense

[Jeff Lane ]

There was a time when ethernet devices were ethX, and it was a happy time.

Then things moved to udev, device mapper and you never know WHAT your ethernet device is going to be called.

But lately, things have turned for the strange... udev has a habit, apparently (or device mapper perhaps, not sure what's generating the actual device names) of calling ethernet devces things like "renameX"... what the heck is a "rename"?? it's not an em, or eth, or wlan or whatever.

Here's an example from a recent server certification:
---------------------------[ Devices found by udev ]----------------------------
Category: NETWORK
Interface: em1
Product: NC362i Integrated Dual Port BL-c Gigabit Server Adapter
Vendor: Intel Corporation
Driver: igb (ver: 5.0.5-k)
Path: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.0/0000:03:00.0

Category: NETWORK
Interface: rename3
Product: NC362i Integrated Dual Port BL-c Gigabit Server Adapter
Vendor: Intel Corporation
Driver: igb (ver: 5.0.5-k)
Path: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.0/0000:03:00.1

Category: NETWORK
Interface: em3
Product: NC543i 1-port 4x QDR IB/Flex-10 10Gb Adapter
Vendor: Mellanox Technologies
Driver: mlx4_core (ver: 2.2-1)
Path: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:07.0/0000:02:00.0

This system has two things, a dual port gigabit adapter, and a 1 port 10GbE adapter.

It calls the second interface on the dual port gigabit adapter rename3.

What the heck is a rename3?

I have seen this now on more than a couple servers with multiple network devices from different OEMs.

Attached is dmesg from that machine.

[Jeff Lane  (bladernr)]

And here is lspci verbose...

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Rod Smith (rodsmith)]

I've seen this too. Sometimes the names seem to change with the kernel -- kernel version A brings up Ethernet interfaces with sensible names but kernel version B brings up one interface OK and another with a "rename" name.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

In the attached log file we can see the following:

[ 2.308053] systemd-udevd[248]: renamed network interface eth0 to em1
[ 2.328011] systemd-udevd[255]: renamed network interface eth1 to rename3

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Does the installed system have the biosdevname package installed?

[Jeff Lane  (bladernr)]

Brian,

biosdevname 0.4.1-0ubuntu6

Keep in mind I don't have access to the system anymore... Mike Miller at HP (the Field Engineer there for the Technical Partner Program) may be able to get back onto that system.

[Romano Giannetti (romano-giannetti)]

I do not have biosdevname installed, but I can't anymore create virtual interfaces. Issuing

     sudo iw dev wlan0 interface add wlan1 type station

will result in a message

     kernel: [31130.438726] systemd-udevd[24264]: renamed network interface wlan1 to rename4

...and rename4 is not recognized as a wifi interface at all. Any help? What's happening?