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Predictable interface names on Ubuntu on Raspberry Pi

uz flag

I want to set up a Raspberry Pi wireless AP. I downloaded the Ubuntu image for Raspberry Pi (server), wrote the image to a microSD card, then put it into my Pi 3B+. Ubuntu boots up just fine, so far so good, except...

$ ip link
1: lo: ...
    ....
2: eth0: ...
    ....
3: wlan0: ...
    ....

I found it strange because I thought Ubuntu adopted predictable network interface names a long time ago. I want to use predictable names, because I don't want any software (especially hostapd-related) to break due to the interface name change (which is likelier because I plan to add the USB Ethernet adapter later).

After some search and then a friend's help, I found out that

$ cat /proc/cmdline
... net.ifnames=0 ...

... was the problem, but couldn't find what software/configuration exactly was setting that value. It's usually the GRUB config, but Ubuntu for Raspberry Pi doesn't use GRUB.

So I simply searched the entire filesystem for net\.ifnames and figured it was /boot/firmware/cmdline.txt:

net.ifnames=0 dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=serial0,115200 console=tty1 root=LABEL=writable rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline rootwait fixrtc

So it seems this is preventing the kernel to adopt the modern concept. I changed it to net.ifnames=1 and rebooted. Now, this is what I get:

$ ip link
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 …
    link/loopback …
2: enx************: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 …
    link/ether …
3: wlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 …
    link/ether …

… which leaves me two questions:

  1. The wired interface name is "enx************" where ************ is the network interface MAC address. This would surely be predictable, but not helpful at all. It's too long and nearly impossible to memorize. Can I change it to the form of "enp5s0"?
  2. "wlan0" is still "wlan0." Can I fix this?

I tried adding biosdevname=1 next to net.ifnames=1 but it had no effect.

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