Lesson 5

Dates: 2/20/2019
Linux networking
Linux System Administration


Exercise: Physical layer - NIC naming

  • The old traditional naming convention for NICs: eth0, eth1, eth2, ...
    Now systemd assigns names based on PCI slot address.

  • On the desktop, check available network interfaces: 
    ls  /sys/class/net
    You should see enp4s0, lo, virbr0, virbr0-nic, vnet0, vnet1, vnet2.
    The ethernet interface is named enp4s0.
    Where en stands for Ethernet, and p4s0 for the PCI slot address.

  • Run command lspci to see the PCI devices for the Ethernet: 
    lspci | grep Ethernet
    The PCI naming means domain:bus:slot.function. Usually domain=0 and is not present in the output.
    We see bus=04, slot=00, function=0
    The NIC name follows the PCI device location.

  • Get the info for PCI slot 04:00.0 
    lspci -v -mm -s 04:00.0
    It shows: 
    Slot:	04:00.0
Class:	Ethernet controller
Vendor:	Broadcom Corporation
Device:	NetXtreme BCM5754 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express
SVendor:	Dell
SDevice:	Precision T3400
Rev:	02


    The network interfaces with the parameters assigned can be viewed by command
    ifconfig -a


    • Take me to the Course Website