Ubuntu – How to rename network interface in 15.10

While Googling, I came across a few instances of others suffering with the same problem as me only to discover their ethernet cables weren't working, or something equally trivial. Hah! What idiots! Surely that's the first thing you check! ... Well, it turns out the power cable had ever-so-slightly slipped out of my network switch.

I shall hang my head in shame.

There is a lot of misleading information about how to change network names in recent versions of Ubuntu. Some information points to systemd.link, which is just wrong because Ubuntu (as of 16.04) does not use this part of systemd.

Actually, changing interface name works nearly like it used to, with two small differences: First, the file /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules now has to be created manually. This has the advantage that you do not have to worry about any script overwriting this file and can simply add the lines that you need (you do not need any comments either). Second - and this is the change that cost me a lot of time to figure it out - the format changed slightly compared to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS:

The line for fixing the interface name of the NIC with MAC address "02:01:02:03:04:05" to "eth0" is now:

SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="02:01:02:03:04:05", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", NAME="eth0"

This line looks nearly the same as in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with one slight difference: In Ubuntu 14.04, there was the additional condition KERNEL=="eth*". For some reason, this does not work in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. If this additional condition is present, the whole line is ignored and you are back to the default behavior (as specified in 80-net-setup-link.rules).