Mystery of device names

[Andy Green]

Somebody in the thread at some point said:

> I've noticed before that computers often seem to insist
> on using a particular device,
> without any particular reason as far as I can see.
> Eg a WiFi card might work as eth1 but not as eth0,
> no matter how hard one tries to persuade it.

AIUI the driver gets to choose the base part of the device name, like
"eth" or "wlan".  It then tacks on a number that depends on how many
network interfaces already exist using the same basename.

So in the eth1 case you mention, no doubt your wired ethernet adapater
already owned eth0... note interfaces don't show in

ifconfig

unless they are up.

ifconfig -a

will show you all the devices that actually exist whether they are up or
not.  So I guess that is why you couldn't convince the wlan device to
use eth0.

As to how your ethernet device grew to like a network interface name of
dev10788, I have no idea but would also like to know.

-Andy