RHEL4 U5 and NICs order/naming

[wolf2k5]

Hi,

We've a Dell PowerEdge 1950 with 4 Broadcom NICs.

Yesterday we upgraded it from RHEL4 Update 4 to 5, including the new kernel.

After the reboot, we noticed that the server was not reachable from
the network anymore.

After some investigation, it turned out that the new kernel changed
the NICs order/naming, e.g. what was eth0 with the U4 kernel became
eth1 with the U5 kernel and so on.

We brought the server back online by changing the network scripts and
assign the correct IP addresses to the renamed NICs.

How can we prevent this from happening again when applying a new kernel?

Thanks.