Mystery of device names

[Timothy Murphy]

On Wed 05 Sep 2007, Andy Green wrote:

> > 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.

Thanks for the info.
But I am surprised that setting something like 
"alias eth0 orinoco_cs" in /etc/modprobe.conf 
is not enough to persuade the laptop to use eth0 for this card,
even after re-booting?