RHEL4 U5 and NICs order/naming

[Kuba Ober]

> 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.
[...]
> 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?

Going from RHEL4 to RHEL5 is hardly "applying a new kernel". This problem 
likely won't recur until you upgrade to RHEL 6 ;)

Cheers, Kuba