{"id":7666,"date":"2026-03-12T10:19:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T09:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomaskalabis.com\/wordpress\/?p=7666"},"modified":"2026-03-12T10:19:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T09:19:22","slug":"proxmox-ve-how-to-change-alternative-names-network-adapters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomaskalabis.com\/wordpress\/proxmox-ve-how-to-change-alternative-names-network-adapters\/","title":{"rendered":"Proxmox VE &#8211; How to change alternative names of the network adapters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3>Proxmox VE &#8211; How to change alternative names of the network adapters<\/h3>\n<p>Before shipping servers to a customer, we stage and configure everything in our demo lab first. During that phase, the hardware was connected to a 10GbE switch \u2014 that&#8217;s what we had available \u2014 so when running through the Proxmox installer, I used the alternative names feature to label the NICs accordingly: <code>nic2_10g<\/code>, <code>nic3_10g<\/code>.<\/p>\n<p>At the customer site, those same cards were going into Cisco Nexus 25GbE switches. The naming no longer matched the hardware, and having <code>bond-slaves nic2_10g nic3_10g<\/code> on a 25GbE uplink was just asking for confusion during troubleshooting. Time to clean that up.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s get it sorted.<\/p>\n<h4>How Proxmox Names NICs<\/h4>\n<p>Proxmox uses a tool called <code>pve-network-interface-pinning<\/code> which during installation creates <code>.link<\/code> files in <code>\/usr\/local\/lib\/systemd\/network\/<\/code>. Each file pins a physical NIC&#8217;s MAC address to a specific interface name.<\/p>\n<p>A typical file looks like this:<\/p>\n<pre><code class=\"language-ini\"># setup by the Proxmox installer.\n[Match]\nMACAddress=30:3e:a7:35:6f:a0\nType=ether\n\n[Link]\nName=nic2_10g\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>This is standard systemd-networkd persistent naming \u2014 Proxmox just uses its own directory instead of <code>\/etc\/systemd\/network\/<\/code>.<\/p>\n<h4>The Fix<\/h4>\n<p>The process is straightforward: update the <code>.link<\/code> files, rename them, update <code>\/etc\/network\/interfaces<\/code>, regenerate initramfs, reboot.<\/p>\n<h3>1. Check the current config<\/h3>\n<pre><code class=\"language-bash\">cat \/usr\/local\/lib\/systemd\/network\/50-pmx-nic2_10g.link\ncat \/usr\/local\/lib\/systemd\/network\/50-pmx-nic3_10g.link\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>Note the MAC addresses \u2014 useful for verification after the rename.<\/p>\n<h3>2. Update the Name in the <code>.link<\/code> files<\/h3>\n<pre><code class=\"language-bash\">sed -i 's\/Name=nic2_10g\/Name=nic2_25g\/' \/usr\/local\/lib\/systemd\/network\/50-pmx-nic2_10g.link\nsed -i 's\/Name=nic3_10g\/Name=nic3_25g\/' \/usr\/local\/lib\/systemd\/network\/50-pmx-nic3_10g.link\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<h3>3. Rename the files themselves<\/h3>\n<pre><code class=\"language-bash\">mv \/usr\/local\/lib\/systemd\/network\/50-pmx-nic2_10g.link \\\n   \/usr\/local\/lib\/systemd\/network\/50-pmx-nic2_25g.link\n\nmv \/usr\/local\/lib\/systemd\/network\/50-pmx-nic3_10g.link \\\n   \/usr\/local\/lib\/systemd\/network\/50-pmx-nic3_25g.link\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<h3>4. Update <code>\/etc\/network\/interfaces<\/code><\/h3>\n<pre><code class=\"language-bash\">sed -i 's\/nic2_10g\/nic2_25g\/g; s\/nic3_10g\/nic3_25g\/g' \/etc\/network\/interfaces\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<h3>5. Verify before rebooting<\/h3>\n<pre><code class=\"language-bash\">cat \/usr\/local\/lib\/systemd\/network\/50-pmx-nic2_25g.link\ngrep nic \/etc\/network\/interfaces\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>No old names should appear anywhere.<\/p>\n<h3>6. Regenerate initramfs<\/h3>\n<p>This step is easy to miss and will cause the rename to silently revert after reboot. systemd <code>.link<\/code> files are applied very early in the boot process \u2014 before the full filesystem is available \u2014 so they need to be baked into the initramfs:<\/p>\n<pre><code class=\"language-bash\">update-initramfs -u\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<h3>7. Reboot<\/h3>\n<pre><code class=\"language-bash\">reboot\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>After the restart, confirm the new names are active:<\/p>\n<pre><code class=\"language-bash\">ip link show | grep nic\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>You should see <code>nic2_25g<\/code> and <code>nic3_25g<\/code> instead of the old names.<\/p>\n<h2>On a Multi-Node Cluster<\/h2>\n<p>If you&#8217;re running a Proxmox cluster (typically 3 nodes), do this <strong>one node at a time<\/strong>. Reboot, wait for the node to rejoin the cluster, then move on to the next. This keeps quorum intact throughout.<\/p>\n<pre><code class=\"language-bash\"># Check cluster health before and after each reboot\npvecm status\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Tested on Proxmox VE 8.x, three-node cluster with 2\u00d725GbE active-backup bond and a dedicated 2\u00d71GbE cluster network.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Proxmox VE &#8211; How to change alternative names of the network adapters Before shipping servers to a customer, we stage and configure everything in our demo lab first. During that &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[427],"tags":[425,431],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Proxmox VE \u2013 How to Change Alternative Names of Network Adapters<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Learn how to rename network adapter alternative names in Proxmox VE using systemd .link files. 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