Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 10 - INSTALLATION AND ADMINISTRATION 11-05-2007 Installation Manual page 600

external, internal, or dmz. Make sure that the same interface name is not
used twice. Allowed characters in interface names are restricted to [a-zA-Z0-9].
A persistent name can only be assigned to an interface immediately after its regis-
tration, which means that the driver of the network card must be reloaded or
hwup device description must be executed. The command rcnetwork
restart is not sufficient for this purpose.
IMPORTANT: Using Persistent Interface Names
The use of persistent interface names has not been tested in all areas.
Therefore, some applications may not be able to handle freely selected
interface names.
ifup requires an existing interface, because it does not initialize the hardware. The
initialization of the hardware is handled by the command hwup (executed by hotplug
or coldplug). When a device is initialized, ifup is automatically executed for the
new interface via hotplug and the interface is set up if the start mode is onboot,
hotplug, or auto and the network service was started. Formerly, the command
ifup interfacename triggered the hardware initialization. Now the procedure has
been reversed. First, a hardware component is initialized then all other actions follow.
In this way, a varying number of devices can always be configured in the best way
possible with an existing set of configurations.
Table 30.5, "Manual Network Configuration Scripts"
important scripts involved in the network configuration. Where possible, the scripts are
distinguished by hardware and interface.
Table 30.5
Configura-
tion Stage
Hardware
582 Installation and Administration
Manual Network Configuration Scripts
Command
hw{up,down,status}
(page 582) summarizes the most
Function
The hw* scripts are executed by the hot-
plug subsystem to initialize a device, un-
do the initialization, or query the status
of a device. More information is available
in the manual page of hwup.