Linux " device eth0 does not seem to be present ,delaying initialization"

To list the current ethn devices:

# ls /sys/class/net
eth1 lo

There is a device manager, udev, which stores the settings from the NIC of the vm prior to the cloning? process.? When you clone a vm it also changes the mac address of the NIC and as a result the vm sees it as a new NIC and assigns it to /dev/eth1.

As a result, we now have to edit the udev config file as well as the ifcfg-eth0 file to get the newly update virtual NIC card to operate on the eth0 device.

First, edit: /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

# This file was automatically generated by the /lib/udev/write_net_rules
# program, run by the persistent-net-generator.rules rules file.
#
# You can modify it, as long as you keep each rule on a single
# line, and change only the value of the NAME= key.

# PCI device 0x15ad:0x07b0 (vmxnet3) (custom name provided by external tool)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:50:56:bc:00:45", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth0"

# PCI device 0x15ad:0x07b0 (vmxnet3)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:50:56:bc:00:46", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth1"

Delete the first SUBSYSTEM entry in the file.

Update the 'eth1' attribute in the remaining entry to 'eth0'

Edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

. Change the HWADDR to match the new mac address listed in the newly edited 70-persistent-net.rules file.

reboot.