Vyatta TIPS

Interface name recognition/shutdown

Recognize interfaces

Everyone installed Vyatta on PC will notice that there is a problem in recognizing the names associated with the interfaces.

For example, when you install a router with 3 or 4 interfaces, you will not be able to recognize which name is associated with which interface.

When you issue the show interfaces command, you will see something like this:

Interface    IP Address         State       Link   Description                  
eth0         x.x.x.22/24        up          up     WAN                          
eth1         y.y.y.2/24         up          up     MP                           
eth2         x.x.x.1/24         up          up     Local Natted vSwitch         
eth3         10.0.0.1/30        up          up     Private to the VMs           
lo           127.0.0.1/8        up          up                                  
lo           ::1/128            up          up                                  

You cannot tell which name associates with which interface, unless you either know the bus, then compare it with the output of the following command:

vyatta@xxxx:~$ show interfaces ethernet eth0 physical | grep bus
bus-info: 0000:00:10.0

or you know the mac address and look into the mac of the interfaces:

vyatta@xxxx:~$ show interfaces ethernet eth0 | grep link/ether | cut -b 16-32
00:0c:29:85:a6:30

Otherwise, there is a hidden command that is not mentioned in the documentation. When you issue this command, the specified interface should blink until you press enter.

vyatta@xxxx:~$ show interfaces ethernet eth0 identify 
Interface eth0 should be blinking now.
Press Enter to stop...

Now, repeat that command with all interfaces.

Shutdown interfaces

To shutdown an interface, you just issue the following command:

vyatta@xxxx# set interfaces ethernet eth0 disable

To return it back just replace the set command with delete.