Re: what's the best way to deal with a disconnect eth0?

[Joe Emenaker <joe@emenaker.com>]

Derek Broughton wrote:

"HOTPLUG_INTERFACES" is set to nothing. If it is set to "all" or "eth0",
it will override anything on the auto line in /etc/network/interfaces
(just learned that the hard way three days ago).
    

Is that just for a built-in ethernet?

For me, yes. All of my stuff is built-in.

My understanding of Hotplug is that it trys to ifup interfaces when they become available. If the hardware is there at boot time and the kernel loads the drivers and recognizes it.... that's considered to be "becoming available". As a result, if you have built-in interfaces (or cardbus ones that you just leave in all the time) and they're listed in HOTPLUG_INTERFACES, then hotplug will try to ifup them at boot time. That's why I was getting long pauses during bootup at the "Configuring network interfaces..." line.

I'm not entirely sure what the "approved" method for handling cardbus ethernet interfaces is, because there are two levels of "becoming available" there. First, you need hotplug to see when the *card* is there, but then you need hotplug to spawn an ifplugd for that interface to watch for when a *cable* is plugged into it. Or, in the face of a wifi card, you'd probably want hotplug to spawn/respawn waproamd.

Behavior like that is probably configured down in the bowels of /etc/hotplug somewhere.

I think that, for this to get any easier to configure, the developers of hotplug, ifplugd, and waproamd are going to have to put their heads together with the aim of making them a cohesive laptop-networking solution.

- Joe

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