New "e1000" network adapter for Fedora 9 guest in VMWare Server 2

I read somewhat that in VMWare Server 2, I can get better network performance if I use the new Intel "e1000" network adapter instead of the default AMD one. So here's the process of replacing the adapter.

For each guest, add the following line to each VMX file:
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"

For Windows 2003 guests, the new hardware will be automatically recognized and a new "Local Area Network 2" connection will be created.

For Fedora 9 guests, eth0 will fail to work during boot time as the new hardware is recognized as eth1. Modifying the network config files under "/etc/sysconfig/networking" do not help because in Fedora 9, udev controls the hardware. The following file needs to be modified:

/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

Remove or comment out the original line for the AMD network adapter.
# Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] 79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE] (rule written by anaconda)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:0c:29:9b:f4:58", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth0"


The new e1000 adapter should be in the file as:
# PCI device 0x8086:0x100f (e1000)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:0c:29:d2:28:34", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth1"


change NAME="eth1" to "eth0" so we get:

# PCI device 0x8086:0x100f (e1000)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:0c:29:d2:28:34", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth0"

Reboot and the network service should start fine at boot time.

My first attempt at blogging!

Wow! I still can't believe that I've finally became a blogger. I used to tell myself never to become one, but guess what? Thanks to a friend, I found out that the blog is actually a great place to put all the technical information that I learnt; instead of just creating lots of little text files in my systems (that I can't seem to find the time to organize).