Renaming Network Devices

So, as of Ubuntu 16.04, or rather 15 something, they changed up their naming schemes for the network devices, coming up with some crazy names.

en3p0b or something.....

Not easy like the old school eth0 was…

Well, I found the specific info from AskUbuntu specifying how to change this!

How To

First, get your devices MAC address, by running ip link

The output will show something similar to:

3: wlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP mode DORMANT group default qlen 1000
      link/ether 20:68:9d:xx:xx:xx brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

The important info is after link/ether, with 5 : between 6 sets of 2 numbers. Thats the devices MAC address.

20:68:9d:xx:xx:xx

Next, we need to create a new file, /etc/udev/rules.d/10-network.rules.

Note

Obviously, if you are already using other .rules inside of /etc/udev/rules.d/, you know - hopefully - what naming schemes are needed or know where to look. This info is beyond this current page.

So, use your fav text editor:

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/10-network.rules

Add the following line, replacing aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff after ATTR{address} with your devices MAC address and etho after NAME with the name that YOU want to use, in lieu of what the devices name is currently.

SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", ATTR{address}=="aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff", NAME="eth0"

Then, the best way to make it appear is to simply restart your machine.