Fedora and funky network device names

You may have noticed that fresh installations of Fedora 15 have network device named of “em1” or “p1n1” rather than the easy to remember “eth” nomenclature.  It seems that those in the Linux world wish to take a step backwards, forgetting all that was gained with the simplified naming convention.

Dial back time about 15 years, SunOS and HP-UX dominate the market, and it was a nightmare scripting around the various network device names (as well as the disk device names, too, but that is another story.. let’s hope that doesn’t return!).  When dealing with multiple models within the same platform, there was no guarantee you would end up with the same device name.

In the most simplistic terms, with linux’s use of “eth” and “hd” (or now “sd”), it made the newly evolving world of systems administration that much easier to manage and maintain.

While there is justification behind the change on the Fedora site, it is clearly a “head in the sand” move, one that only moves the core coding difficulties out from the linux device drivers & udev to now be a difficulty for the administrators and end users.  Administrators and users now have to update udev rules to go back to “eth” device names if they want to keep things clean.  Thanks for the extra work.

One word: Boo.