[solved] Broadcom BCM4311 shows interfaces eth0 to eth16

[johnmart]

My laptop Dell vostro1500 has Broadcom 4401 ethernet & 4311 wireless.
As the title says my netmonitor shows eth0 'til eth16. Also wlan0 til wlan2.
Wireless is active as eth0.
Also, every 2 or 3 startups wireless won't connect & network setup doesn't recognise wireless & offers ndiswrapper.
I think this started after I upgraded my kernel to from 2.6.33.7-pclos1.bfs to 2.6.33.7-pclos3.bfs
The updated kernel totally unrecognised both wired & wireless. I reverted to the previous kernel & all ok.
Sometime after this the trouble came up. I think.
Maybe another clue: at that time I got the 1minute boot-up delay while the kernel waited for sda5 then sda6.
I fixed menu.lst & fstab, but I didn't repair the init.rd cuz it had the correct kernel number. The fix failed--then I fixed the initrd. Then startup was ok.
I figure the kernel upgrade then revert was not completely successful & left some unresolved stuff?
Summary:
I want to stabilize the startup & wireless rcognition, & fix the eth0 - eth16 mess.
Oh, wireless driver is wl, ethernet driver is b44 - I'm on kde4x fully updated.
Appreciate any ideas.

[jlf001]

johnmart,

Your broadcom problems are kernel related.  Try installing the newest kernel 2.6.33.7-pclos4.bfs, as the problem has been fixed.  Additionally, to clean up the eth0 - eth16 mess, etc., as root delete the "/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules" text file and reboot.  This will give you a fresh start.  Note that you need to set up your wifi connection again. 

Jeff

[johnmart]

Hey jif001,
I upgraded the kernel & wifi seems persistent. 
But the eth0-16 mess won't go away. 
I deleted the /etc/udev/persistent.net.rules & rebooted. The file was modified but had the same results.
I poked around in udev & found reference to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/
There I found files ifcfg-eth0 - ethcfg-eth16 plus ifcfg.wlan0 - ifcfgwlan2
So....
Do you know the relationship of /etc/udev/persistent.net.rules
to the files in;
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/
I considered simply renaming the extra files but would prefer to fix it right by understanding how they got there etc.
Also, I think wireless should be wlan0 & wired ethernet should be eth0. But I don't really understand the difference.
Thanks for the input, hope you have some more! 

[muungwana]

you were supposed to delete all those ethX and wlanY in "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/" and then delete ""/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules" text file" and then reboot. This will give you a "fresher" start    ... no pun intended jlf001  .. i read your reply earlier and i agreed with you 100%, i totally forgot about the deleting the script folder.

when the system starts, the hardware will recognize all network cards attached to your system and write them in that udev file and then the network will create those "ethX" and "wlanY" devices for every udev entry it will find.

how many wireless and wired cards do you have? i have noticed that udev will put an entry to every new card it will detect and wont delete them automatically so if you use different various cards, those numbers will bet pretty high.

[johnmart]

Thanks muungwana,

So I actually had the right first impression to hack&slash the eth & wlan files! really amazing!

Thanks also for the explanation re. their creation.
This is a laptop & I never looked physically but I imagine it is one card with 2 modules, the ethernet & wireless have different numbers 4401 & 4311.
So, I'll try out your advice now & hopefully edit thread title. 
Thanks again for your attention & have a good day.