Procedure for changing ethernet controllers on fedora system

Question

I have an fc17 system in which I've had to change the ethernet controller from an e1000e card to what I believe is an rtl81391`2. I recall changing the 70-persistent-net udev config file, but that appears to no longer exist on my fc17 system.

What is the proper procedure for detecting, initializing, and reconfiguring the system to use my new card?

I believe I'll also had to use dracut to recreate the initrd. I will also need to detect for sure which driver the new ethernet controller uses.

Answer 1

You need to get the MAC address for the new card and replace the old
card's MAC address value in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-.
Specifically, edit the 'HWADDR="..."' line. You can do this without
rebooting, but it's probably easiest to just do this;

1. Boot the system with the new NIC
2. Run 'ifconfig -a', the new NIC will appear despite not being
   configured. Copy it's MAC address.
3. Edit the old card's config file and change the HWADDR value to the
   new NIC.
4. reboot.

Comments

Recently, my onboard NIC failed. Before installing the new NIC, I  edited that file and removed the HWADDR= line. When I brought the system up with the new card, it found, installed and configured the card  without any intervention and It Just Worked. In fact there's no such line in the file, even now. (I just checked.) YMMV, of course, but I'd suggest trying this first, as it's the easiest way.