missing eth0 interface when moving between vmware hosts
| December 10th, 2008This problem only happens when one uses udev to manage device node files and names of the network interfaces present in the system.
What can happen is that the eth0 interface present when running the server under one vmware instance can become missing after moving to another vmware host. Instead, the system will create a new eth interface – eth1.
This is because udev caches network attributes to interface name assignments to keep network interface names consistent between reboots. The problem is network card parameters (MAC address) can change with different instances of vmware. If the cached version doesn’t match the actual state udev creates a new device -> name assignment.
To fix this in debian and debian-like distribution just delete this file: /etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules
The file will be generated again after rebooting (or restarting udev).