Renaming interfaces under linux

There are many of us that learned Linux in the very early days, and with that history comes habits. One habit I have is to look for spec interface names. In particular, I prefer to have my interfaces named eth* (with some notables exceptions here). Modern linux systems seem to have adopted the BSD methodology of naming the interfaces based on what it is – and while I did do a fair amount of work in BSD, I still prefer the eth naming scheme. ZeroTier has the inconsistency of using zt* on some platforms and ztublkahlah on others. I am sure there is a reason, but I prefer consistency. Here are two ways to rename the interfaces.

This is on a Debuntu system.

Temporarily rename an interface:

ifconfig ztukuxzo4f down
ip link set ztukuxzo4f name zt0
ifconfig zt0 up

Rename an interface persistently:

vi /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

Append:

SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", ATTR{address}=="96:3c:ee:c0:ff:ee", NAME="zt0"

Reboot.

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Renaming interfaces under linux

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