Again, things aren’t as easy as one could hope.
After my obvious fix to the xenon_net kernel module, I’ve noticed that after every reboot, the interface name incremented by one. I’ve now got up to eth5!
At first I was very puzzled, but obi was able to identify the issue: The debian udev scripts are trying to preserve interface names for removed network adapters. They are matched on the MAC-address which is - random, in our case.
But I didn’t.
After I booted 9 of the 10 devices (nr. #2 failed with a flaky DVD drive, and a possibly broken fan), I could only access them “a few times”. They behaved very erratically. A bug in the kernel? Random oopses?
It was a bit simpler than I have thought.
sudo arp -v | grep 00:01 10.0.0.43 ether 00:01:02:03:04:05 C eth0 10.0.0.45 ether 00:01:02:03:04:05 C eth0 10.0.0.40 ether 00:01:02:03:04:05 C eth0 10.