[DHCPC] eth0 disappears after booting

[Bob Billson <kc2wz@pobox.com>]

Hi all!  I am working on setting up a gateway for a small local
newspaper's LAN--using Debian, naturally. :-)  They recently had the local
cable company (Comcast) provide Internet access.  I installed the Debian
DHCPC client from the 1.3 CD-ROM.  DHCPC sort of works.  Here's what is
happening.

The Ethernet cards are both 3Com (a 509 and 590).  The kernel properly
finds each one and assigns it to eth0 and eth1 on boot-up.  DHCPC seems to
start up okay.  Right after booting up ifconfig shows both eth0 and eth1
are seen.  'route -n' shows eth0 (cable modem) as being the gateway with
the proper IP address.  *BUT* we can't reach the 'outside world' (pings
fail).

Within about 60 seconds, the cable modem 'PC' light goes out indicating
the cable modem no longers sees eth0.  Running ifconfig shows eth0 is
gone and only eth1 (the LAN) remains. 'route -n' also shows the cable
modem has vanished.

Then I manually run '/etc/init.d/network start' (as root).  *Everything*
works.  eth0 is back.  route shows the cable modem is back.  The cable
modem is happy *AND* we can now reach the outside world!  This is really
weird behavior and has me baffled. 

Supposedly. dhcpcd puts info in the /etc/dhcpcd directory after it
initially talks to the cable modem.  Nothing has gotten added or changed.

A few weeks ago, I read on the list about 3Com driver insisting on making
eth0 the card with the lowest hardware address.  I also experienced this
and made the necessary changes.  That problem disappeared, so I don't
think the cable modem problem is related.

I'm sure I'm missing something obvious but just don't see it.  Can anyone
offer any help?  Thanks!

       bob
-- 
Bob Billson, KC2WZ                                email: kc2wz@pobox.com
first year beekeeper, 2 colonies                         kc2wz@webspan.net

  (\       MS-DOS, you can't live with it.  You can live without it.    /)
 {|||8-            Linux: the cure for the Windows 95 virus.         -8|||}
  (/                                                                    \)


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