Change Interface name (eth1 to eth0) on Ubuntu 9.04

Probably, many administrator has fallen with this problem before when the clone virtual machines on Virtual enviroments (VMware or Citrix Xen). After cloning the machine and turn it on, there is no IP and the ifconfig command shows that instead of eth0 you have eth1. Then  you go check the configuration for the interfaces on /etc/network/interfaces and you see eth0 configured but what you have it is eth1.

This procedure shows you how to change the name device to eth0 from eth1.

As root, go and  edit /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules


SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:50:56:81:5a:fa", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth1"


Look for the line showing NAME="eth1" and change this value to NAME="eth0".
If there is another line showing NAME="eth0" delete it because it contains the configuration of the cloned machine.

Save the file.

Then open /etc/network/interfaces make sure you have the correct configuration for eth0.
For this case I will use dhcp configuration:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

Finally you can reboot or you can reload the rules with the new name.

# udevadm trigger


This command will reload the rules with the new name so then you can restart networking.

# /etc/init.d/networking restart