Alma 8.5 Mapping, and naming Nic card interfaces inconsistently,

Support
1

Hi Support, Installing Alma 8.5 on 2 identical Supermicro servers the 2 Nic card get Mapped/Named different; the 2 4xInterfaces Nic Cards on each server are in the same physical slots, but for some reason some times server got the Mapping wrong; causing different network issues, even logical interface missing.
For instance:
Srv1:
[root@lctkvmsrv1 ~]# lspci | grep I350
51:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
51:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
51:00.2 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
51:00.3 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
8a:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
8a:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
8a:00.2 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
8a:00.3 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
[root@lctkvmsrv1 ~]#
[root@lctkvmsrv1 ~]# ll -rtl /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/
total 44
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 247 Sep 16 14:45 ifcfg-ens3f3
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 247 Sep 16 14:45 ifcfg-ens1f2
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 243 Sep 16 14:45 ifcfg-eno2
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 243 Sep 16 14:45 ifcfg-usb0
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 247 Sep 16 14:45 ifcfg-ens3f2
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 247 Sep 16 14:45 ifcfg-ens3f1
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 247 Sep 16 14:45 ifcfg-ens3f0
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 247 Sep 16 14:45 ifcfg-ens1f3
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 247 Sep 16 14:45 ifcfg-ens1f1
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 248 Sep 16 14:45 ifcfg-ens1f0
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 243 Sep 16 14:45 ifcfg-eno1
[root@lctkvmsrv1 ~]#

SRV-2:
[root@lctkvmsrv2 ~]# lspci | grep I350
53:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
53:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
55:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
55:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
8c:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
8c:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
8e:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
8e:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
[root@lctkvmsrv2 ~]# ll -rtl /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/
total 44
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 243 Sep 16 14:43 ifcfg-eth2
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 243 Sep 16 14:43 ifcfg-eno2
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 243 Sep 16 14:43 ifcfg-usb0
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 261 Sep 16 14:43 ifcfg-eth7
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 261 Sep 16 14:43 ifcfg-eth6
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 243 Sep 16 14:43 ifcfg-eth3
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 247 Sep 16 14:43 ifcfg-ens3f1
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 247 Sep 16 14:43 ifcfg-ens3f0
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 247 Sep 16 14:43 ifcfg-ens1f1
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 248 Sep 16 14:43 ifcfg-ens1f0
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 243 Sep 16 14:43 ifcfg-eno1
[root@lctkvmsrv2 ~]#

Thanks.

2

First a note: Alma Linux 8 is currently based on RHEL 8.6; the “8.5” is no longer supported.

Second, the network connections are configured by NetworkManager, unless you explicitly change setup. With NM you would list devices with command nmcli d s

Furthermore, if connections are created by the installer, then they are bound to MAC-addresses, rather than to device names. NM does pass the device names to FirewallD, so interfaces are still assigned to firewall zones deterministically. (Assuming you do use FirewallD.)

If you create connection with ‘nmcli’, then you have to use ifname, but you can afterwards modify each connection to refer to MAC-address, rather than to ifname (settings 802-3-ethernet.mac-address and connection.interface-name, respectively).

Why the names act as they do in your systems? No idea. Red Hat describes in Chapter 1. Implementing consistent network interface naming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | Red Hat Customer Portal how it should work.

There are also instructions for setting device names with “udev rules” or “systemd link files”, the latter being perhaps a bit more reliable. (If you scrap FirewallD and prefer nftables.service, then you do need that.)

3

Hi jlethone, I am not changing/creating any setup; the difference in setting the interface names, and mapping is seeing at the initial Network & Host Name area after the .ISO start.
image
For some unknow reason the system assign that wrong, in one of the servers. The 2 servers are Identical; same Bios Ver, same firmware Ver, etc. and the 2 Nic cards are in the same physical slots on both servers.

Regards,

Christian

4

Yes. Neither of us knows the reason.

I would at least ensure that each connection binds to MAC.

for DEV in eno1 eno2 ens3f0
do
    echo "Device: ${DEV}"
    nmcli -f connection.interface-name con sh ${DEV}
    nmcli -f 802-3-ethernet.mac-address con sh ${DEV}
done

If some connection does not bind with MAC, then fix it. For example:

nmcli con mod ens3f0 connection.interface-name "" 802-3-ethernet.mac-address 3C:EC:EF:21:78:74

As said, you can list devices with:

nmcli d s

but more info about them, including MAC, you get with:

nmcli d show
5

Hi J, I think I found the issue, that is related to supported Nic Cards.
Server-1 without issues has 2 identical 4 port Nic cards with following model:
image

Is there any Alma Network Adapter Hardware Compatibility List somewhere?

Regards,

Christian