> > Not fine to a lot of servers, though. Sometimes you have multiple nics > > in a machine and you don't want certain ones even coming up if you can > > avoid it. Maybe they're a heartbeat backup nic > > Loading the driver doesn't mean assigning an address to it. I don't see > how simply having the driver loaded would cause problems for a backup > NIC. loading the driver means activating the device, which typically means the network (especially switches) are suddenly aware of it. That can be real bad in heartbeat configurations when you want to load it as different hw address on failure. > > or maybe they're an > > onboard nic that plays hell with your bios. > > That just sounds like a bug. bug or not, loading a driver just b/c a device is present is a good way to make A LOT of systems unbootable. I'll point you to thousands of video cards as an example. -sv
