autoconfiguring inet6 with ifup/down

[Joost Witteveen <joostje@iliana.nl>]

I just enabled ipv6 on my main computer, and activated radvd on the 
local LAN port.
After that, as by magic, the ethernet card on my other properly 
configures itself with just a "ifconfig eth0 up", really cool.

However, I don't see what I should write in /etc/network/interfaces to 
make ifup eth0 just do a "ifconfig eth0 up", letting the autoconfiguring 
of ipv6 doing it's work.

According to interfaces(5), the only available methods for inet6 are 
"static" and "v4tunnel".
I am missing the "auto" method.


In case the above isn't clear, here's the same story with more words:

Internet
    |
    eth0
       foko.komputilo.org
    eth1  (radvd is running this eth1)
    |
    | LAN
    |
    eth0  (this interface is autoconfigured OK by radvd on foko)
       muso.komputilo.org

The port I'd like to auto-config is eth0 on muso.komputilo.org (not 
foko, that one's OK).

It works OK with just ifconfig:

muso# /sbin/ifconfig eth0 down
muso# /sbin/ifconfig eth0;
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:10:DC:33:8F:E1 
         BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
         RX packets:549 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
         TX packets:556 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
         collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
         RX bytes:83814 (81.8 KiB)  TX bytes:75888 (74.1 KiB)
         Interrupt:11 Base address:0x7000
muso# /sbin/ifconfig eth0 up
muso# /sbin/ifconfig eth0
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:10:DC:33:8F:E1 
         inet6 addr: 2001:888:1e6f:0:210:dcff:fe33:8fe1/64 Scope:Global
         inet6 addr: fe80::210:dcff:fe33:8fe1/64 Scope:Link
         UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
         RX packets:558 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
         TX packets:566 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
         collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
         RX bytes:84716 (82.7 KiB)  TX bytes:77624 (75.8 KiB)
         Interrupt:11 Base address:0x7000


But if I try to use "ifup", it always complains about errors in the 
interfaces file:

muso# grep eth0 /etc/network/interfaces
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet6
muso# ifup eth0
/etc/network/interfaces:9: too few parameters for iface line
ifup: couldn't read interfaces file "/etc/network/interfaces"

(or, if I add "auto" as method):

muso# ifup eth0
/etc/network/interfaces:9: unknown method
ifup: couldn't read interfaces file "/etc/network/interfaces"

so, I wonder what method I should use in the interfaces file. (method 
"loopback" doens't give error messages, but also doesn't configure the 
eth0 interface).


# dpkg -l ifupdown|grep ifup
ii  ifupdown       0.6.4-4.12     high level tools to configure network 
interf


--
Groetjes
joostje
47d3fcfe28f2a83497e79d9bc7d5087c-4a1ee1fddab4648175518cb4c1c9edb3ed0e89f0