Re-ordering default Vortex/Cyclone eth{x} assignments (again)

On Saturday 12 May 2003, Donald Becker wrote:
 >That won't work -- PCI drivers cannot override the I/O address. If
 >they did accept the parameter, it wouldn't do what you expect.

Okay, I feel I may be beating a dead horse here, but I'm still confused. 
I've got a system with 4 NICs; two are 3c905Bs and two are 3c900s. I simply 
want to reverse the names assigned to the cards that are currently being 
assigned names eth2 and eth1 (long story; can't just swap cables, and am 
NOT using modules because this is a static kernel for a firewall). These 
two particular cards are consistently addressed at ioports 0xA000 and 
0xA400, with IRQs 10 and 4 respectively; none of which I need to change - I 
*just* want to assign them different eth{X} names than they're getting now.

Nothing in the current Scyld Vortex docs says that adding this to lilo.conf 
won't work (in fact, it implies it will work just fine):

     append="ether=4,0xa400,eth1 ether=10,0xa000,eth2"

...to reverse the names of the cards (which are being given eth2 and eth1 
respectively by default). But as far as I can tell, these new assignments 
are being ignored completely. The interfaces keep their default names not 
matter what I do in lilo.

If I'm reading DB's recent postings here correctly, what I'm trying to do 
is either impossible or very inadvisable. If so, I need to hear that :), 
and if so, my humble suggestion is that the Scyld docs needs to be updated 
to reflect this fact in a very clear way. Google shows that lots of ink has 
been spilled on this topic over the years and it would be nice if the 
definitive source told people in no uncertain terms that they can't change 
PCI card orders or that at the very least it's Bad News to do so.

thanks much,
/jdr/

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