How do you force a wifi interface to be a certain wlanX?

[JacoFourie]

Hi all.

I use 2 WiFi configs on my Pi.

1) The on-board WiFi (wlan0)
2) WiFi dongle (wlan1)

What I have seen is that these 2 will swap randomly and then the on-board will become wlan1 and the dongle will be wlan0. How can I stop this from happening?

We use the Pi in a steel cabinet and the on-board signal is very week. The dongle gets full signal. We use the on-board as backup to the dongle.

[SkyRise]

Search for "predictable interface names" - they're turned off in Raspbian by default.

[JacoFourie]

Hi. I don't want to give it new names. I need it to stay the same way all the time. wlan0 should always be the on-board and wlan1 should be the dongle.

[SkyRise]

It will give them new names, but they will always be static for each interface.

There is no other way to achieve this AFAIK, it all depends on how each interface interacts with the kernel, which is not predictable.

[JacoFourie]

Here they say it can be done but I dont see the files they are talking about.

https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/q ... -and-wlan1

[DougieLawson]

Here they say it can be done but I dont see the files they are talking about.

https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/q ... -and-wlan1

Forget that stackexchange stuff it's three year old junk and irrelevant to Raspbian Stretch.

Enable predictable names and your wlan0 will become wlxaabbccddeeff (based on the hardware MAC address of wlan0), your wlan1 will become wlxffeeddccbbaa (based on the hardware MAC address of wlan1) and those names can NEVER change as the MAC address is burned into the hardware.

That's precisely what predictable names are for so that you can configure your network safe in the knowledge that nothing changes. You won't get any bad surprises.

[Milliways]

Here they say it can be done but I dont see the files they are talking about.

https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/q ... -and-wlan1

Forget that stackexchange stuff it's three year old junk and irrelevant to Raspbian Stretch.

Enable predictable names and your wlan0 will become wlxaabbccddeeff (based on the hardware MAC address of wlan0), your wlan1 will become wlxffeeddccbbaa (based on the hardware MAC address of wlan1) and those names can NEVER change as the MAC address is burned into the hardware.

That's precisely what predictable names are for so that you can configure your network safe in the knowledge that nothing changes. You won't get any bad surprises.

Unless you are using a PI with onboard WiF; for the Pi3 and PIZeroW which is connected over sdio will use the name wlan0

[sparkie777]

there are 2 things to do:

1. switch off this 'predictable naming' crap. all it really does is to give unpredictable names unless you once had a chance to see the given interface names on a booted system. if you want back predictable names like eth0, eth1, wlan0, wlan1, wlan2 just do:

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ln -s /dev/null /etc/systemd/network/99-default.link

2. for explicit assignments create a file '/etc/udev/rules.d/72-xxx.rules'. A sample for this looks like this:

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SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", ATTR{address}=="b8:27:eb:cd:f5:98", NAME="eth0"
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", ATTR{address}=="b8:27:eb:98:a0:cd", NAME="wlan1"
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", ATTR{address}=="60:e3:27:17:55:85", NAME="wlan0"

[JacoFourie]

there are 2 things to do:

1. switch off this 'predictable naming' crap. all it really does is to give unpredictable names unless you once had a chance to see the given interface names on a booted system. if you want back predictable names like eth0, eth1, wlan0, wlan1, wlan2 just do:

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ln -s /dev/null /etc/systemd/network/99-default.link

2. for explicit assignments create a file '/etc/udev/rules.d/72-xxx.rules'. A sample for this looks like this:

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SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", ATTR{address}=="b8:27:eb:cd:f5:98", NAME="eth0"
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", ATTR{address}=="b8:27:eb:98:a0:cd", NAME="wlan1"
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", ATTR{address}=="60:e3:27:17:55:85", NAME="wlan0"

Does this mean I use the MAC address of each device and config it this way ?

[sparkie777]

correct.

of course 2.) is advisable only if there are multiple interfaces of the same kind in use at the same time.

[JacoFourie]

the xxx can I call that static-names ?

[ShiftPlusOne]

... all it really does is to give unpredictable names unless you once had a chance to see the given interface names on a booted system...

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SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", ATTR{address}=="b8:27:eb:cd:f5:98", NAME="eth0"
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", ATTR{address}=="b8:27:eb:98:a0:cd", NAME="wlan1"
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", ATTR{address}=="60:e3:27:17:55:85", NAME="wlan0"

enxb827ebcdf598
wlxb827eb98a0cd
wlx60e327175585
That's unpredictable? If you had to put those values in a udev rule, you already know what the interface names would be.

[sparkie777]

@JacoFourie:
I don't understand what you mean. Arbitrary names are allowed for this file as long as it (for practical reasons) starts with '72-' and ends with '.rules'

@ShiftPlusOne:
I'm not talking about Rasperries only. The systemd-naming scheme is totally unpredictable unless you know the motherboard/ bios/ mac-addresses and other features of your hardware in advance exactly.

This is impractical particularly if there are solely distinct interfaces (e.g. only 1x ethX and only 1x wlanX) interfaces in use.

No need at all to use any interface name other than good old predictable 'eth0' 'wlan0' in that case.

[JacoFourie]

"2. for explicit assignments create a file '/etc/udev/rules.d/72-xxx.rules'. A sample for this looks like this: "

I want to know can I call the rules file 72-static-name.rules

Thanks for the help.

[sparkie777]

yes, you can name it that way

[JacoFourie]

OK so I will leave eth0 alone and only config wlan0 and wlan1.
The problem is we want to get to a general image that we use on a lot of pi's. This solution will mean that we have to edit each image before it is rolled out as the MAC will be diffrent on each Pi.

[sparkie777]

in that case the easiest thing to do to apply step 1.) of above and

2. simply uninstall the Broadcom 802.11 wireless firmware (as you don't need it anyway):

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apt purge firmware-brcm80211

this will leave 'wlan0' (provided by your dongle) alone on your machine and you are done:-)

[JacoFourie]

No we need both.

We want to set-up the on-board as an AP and the dongle as the client.
If the pi is in a wifi hot spot it should connect to the network.
But if it is not then we want to be able to connect to the Pi's AP and then control it that way.

[sparkie777]

there exist methods to distinguish interfaces other than by their MAC address. E.g. relying on the vendor could help in your case. You have to look further. I haven't dealt with that since I switch off predictable stuff all the time.

[Milliways]

No we need both.

We want to set-up the on-board as an AP and the dongle as the client.
If the pi is in a wifi hot spot it should connect to the network.
But if it is not then we want to be able to connect to the Pi's AP and then control it that way.

The on-board WiFi should be allocated `wlan0` even with Predictable Network Interface Names.

If you want to use as an AP you should set `dhcpcd.conf` to ignore the `wlan0` interface, it will then only configure your WiFi dongle.

[sparkie777]

@JacoFourie:

if you don't want to use MAC addresses (because they are too specific) you could setup a file with a more generous rule specification (probably sufficient in your case):

/etc/udev/rules.d/72-static-name.rules

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ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="brcmfmac", NAME="wlan1"

this allows your dongle to allocate wlan0 since the onboard wlan is forced to wlan1

[JacoFourie]

Thanks a lot. I will try it out and let you know

[sparkie777]

inspired by your question (and because I had similar problems in the past myself) I now dug deeper into this.

What came out is this more general approach: [HOWTO] assign predictable WLAN device names without fiddling with MAC addrs - Raspberry Pi Forums

[JacoFourie]

Wow thanks for this. I will give a try. The general vendor method does not work. I saw the on-board and Edimax dongle still swap around. I agree with your post. We need a way to make sure that the adapters are always the same as we have setup a image with everything we need. We then flash this image to about 20 Pi’s at a time. You can not fiddle with each one to change the mac. And for support we can not expect the client to have to fiddle with the files to get it to work.. We want to leave a spare SD card should one fail. And this will help sort out that problem.

Have you tested it. Does it work the way you say?

[sparkie777]

Have you tested it. Does it work the way you say?

I wouldn't ever dare to publish untested code

I think it should work flawlessly. Unless you connect your wifi dongles via an external USB hub. In which case the given configuration must be slightly altered.

The general vendor method does not work.

ok, I don't know this configuration. But at least my suggestion of Post should also work in your special case.