What's new in the Buster release?

This page is still a work in progress. See the official buster release notes and buster issues/warnings for additional information.

New Features

Changes

Upgrade issues

Network interface name migration

The buster release notes warn that the /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules method for assigning persistent network interface names is no longer supported. However, it may be difficult to predict what the new "predictable" interface name will be.

The udevadm command suggested in the release notes, when run under stretch, may not show all of the possible interface name choices. Even in the cases where the name is shown, it may be difficult to see which of the choices will be the correct one.

On remote systems, where having the interface come up is critically important, it may be wise to adopt a pessimistic strategy, and add stanzas in /etc/network/interfaces for every possible interface name, even ones that aren't shown under stretch.

Here is an example stretch system's output:

root@svr4:/# udevadm test-builtin net_id /sys/class/net/eth0 2>/dev/null
ID_NET_NAME_MAC=enxe4115b0dc990
ID_OUI_FROM_DATABASE=Hewlett Packard
ID_NET_NAME_PATH=enp2s0

This system has two onboard network interfaces, but the onboard interface names are not shown in stretch's output. It's not possible to predict whether the new interface name will be enp2s0 or eno0 or eno1. So, the best strategy is to put all three of them into the /etc/network/interfaces file. Then, whichever two are not used may be removed from that file after rebooting into buster.

auto enp2s0
iface enp2s0 inet static
        address 10.76.142.85
        netmask 255.255.254.0
        gateway 10.76.142.1

auto eno0
iface eno0 inet static
        address 10.76.142.85
        netmask 255.255.254.0
        gateway 10.76.142.1

auto eno1
iface eno1 inet static
        address 10.76.142.85
        netmask 255.255.254.0
        gateway 10.76.142.1

(For the curious, this particular interface on this system ended up being eno0.)

On systems that use the interface names in other configuration files besides /etc/network/interfaces, such as firewalls, it might be preferable to assign persistent names through the systemd.link(5) configuration, rather than relying on the "predictable" names.