Re: DHCP problems

[Andrew Schulman <andrex@alumni.utexas.net>]

> Since upgrading from dhcp3-client 3.0+3.0.1rc11-4 to 3.0+3.0.1rc11-5
> the dhclient stopped working correctly and my network interface isn't
> brought up anymore.
> 
> If I do
> 
> # dhclient eth0
> 
> that results amongst other (usual) messages in
> 
> receive_packet failed on eth0: Network is down
> 
> and
> 
> send_packet: Network is down
> 
> If I first do:
> 
> # ifconfig eth0 up
> 
> and then
> 
> # dhclient eth0
> 
> it works. The file /etc/network/interfaces contains the lines
> 
> auto eth0
> iface eth0 inet dhcp
> 
> which looks ok to me.

Yes, this seems fine (although I also have auto lo and

iface lo inet loopback

in mine).

> As mentioned above, with version 3.0+3.0.1rc11-4 it worked. To me, it
> looks like dhclient previously did the "ifconfig eth0 up" itself, but
> now expects somebody else to do it, but nobody does.
> 
> As a result, I have to manually bring up the network (which is
> annoying) as ifup doesn't do it.

It seems that ifup isn't doing its job.  First, be sure that ifup is
installed, and that it's being run at boot.  On my box this happens in 
etc/init.d/networking.

Next, look at what ifup is doing when you run it:  run

ifup -n eth0

and see what it tells you it's doing.  This will probably show you what's
going wrong.

Good luck,
Andrew.