The Ethernet devices in Linux
As already stated earlier, in a GNU/Linux system, Ethernet devices are usually called eth0, eth1, and so on, even if some exceptions may exist. In fact, as we already saw in Chapter 1
, Installing the Developing System
, a virtual Ethernet connection (that is, an Ethernet port emulated over a USB connection) is called usb0, usb1, and so on. Also, in Chapter 7
, Serial Ports and TTY Devices - TTY, Managing TTY into the Kernel with SLIP, we found that SLIP devices are called sl0, sl1, and so on.
Note
Other examples can be found in The Linux Documentation Project at:Â http://www.tldp.org/LDP/nag2/x-087-2-hwconfig.tour.html .
Another example of special naming can be the ones created by USB Ethernet adapters like the one shown here:

If we try to connect one of these devices to our host PC, we should get something similar to the following kernel messages:
New USB device found, idVendor=0b95, idProduct=7720 New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber...