The problem seems to be that, when I run modprobe to load the driver
for my ethernet interface, ifup or ifconfig seems to get run as
well. Since I have my 3c95x driver in my /etc/modules, it gets
loaded at boot time and then the interface actually gets *brought
up*. Now, I kinda suspect that it's "ifup" that's getting run
because the interface, after it has been brought up, seems to use
the contents of /etc/network/interfaces... which is a debianism.
However, if ifconfig can save/restore the settings from the last
time the interface was brought up, then I guess ifconfig could be
what's being run... but I really suspect ifup.