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Getting old network interface

name back in RHEL/CentoS 7

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LinuxTechLab.com
Ever since the release of RHEL version 7, i have been most annoyed by the way the
network interfaces have been named in OS. Earlier, the names for interfaces would be
eth0 or eth1 for ethernet interfaces & wlan0 for wifi interfaces. But now we have names
like enp1s0 or enp2sf0, which does not make sense at all and moreover you might find
different names for same port in different machine, which only complicates the thing.
So, i have looked up a way to bring back old interfaces names on latest versions of RH
EL/Centos, tested the method & now sharing the method with you guys in this short
tutorial.

Word of caution, this method requires us to make changes to grub configuration file, so
make sure you take a backup of the file before you decide to proceed further.

Step 1 Edit the grub configuration file

Open the file grub file i.e. /etc/default/grub ,
$ vi /etc/default/grub

& add net.ifnames=0 biosdevname=0 at the end of the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX line,

so it looks like,

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=rd.lvm.lv=centos/swap vconsole.keymap=us
crashkernel=auto rd.lvm.lv=centos/root vconsole.font=latarcyrheb-sun16 rhgb
quiet net.ifnames=0 biosdevname=0

Save the file & exit.

Step 2 -Testing & updating grub configurations

We will now make sure that the changes made are correct by running,
$ grub2-mkconfig

If we dont get any errors, then we are good to move ahead & update the grub
configurations by running,
$ grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

After the grub update finishes, we can move to last step of the method.
Step 3 Updating the network interfaces file
We will now only have to update the network interfaces configuration file names. To do
that, goto
$ cd /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts

& change the files interfaces file names,

$ cp ifcfg-enp3s0 ifcfg-eth0
$ cp ifcfg-wlp2s0 ifcfg-wlan0

Now open the both the files i.e. eth0 & wlan0 & change the NAME variable inside the
files to reflect the correct names of the interfaces.

Next & last thing to do is to REBOOT the systems & your system will identify the network
interfaces by the old naming convention used prior to RHEL/CentOS 7. Though i have
not tested this tutorial for Ubuntu, but it should work on latest versions of Ubuntu as
well. If you plan to test it out, do let us know.

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