Customizing How Generic Link Names Are Assigned By the Operating System

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Caution - You must customize how generic link names are automatically assigned before you install Oracle Solaris. After installation, you cannot customize the default link names without removing existing configurations.

Oracle Solaris uses the prefix net when assigning link names. However, you can use any custom prefix that you prefer, such as eth. You can also disable the automatic assignment of generic link names.

To disable automatic link naming, or to customize the prefix of link names, set the following property in the System Configuration (SC) manifests. The SC manifests are used by the Automated Installer (AI) feature of Oracle Solaris.

<service name="network/datalink-management"
version="1" type="service">
<instance name="default enabled="true">
<property_group name='linkname-policy'
type='application'>
<propval name='phys-prefix' type='astring'
value='net'/>
</property_group>
</instance>
</service

By default, the value for the phys-prefix property is set to net, as shown in bold in the previous output.

To disable automatic naming, set the value for the phys-prefix property to an empty string, for example:
```
<propval name='phys-prefix' type='astring' value=''/> 
```
If you disable automatic naming, then datalink names are based on their associated hardware drivers, such as bge0, e1000g0, and so on.
To use a prefix other than net, specify a new prefix as the value of phys-prefix, such as eth.

If the value that is provided for the phys-prefix property is invalid, then that value is ignored. The datalinks are then named according to their associated hardware drivers, such as bge0, e1000g0, and so on. For rules about valid link names, see Rules for Valid Link Names.