loopback interface does not come up

[brownh@hartford-hwp.com (Haines Brown)]

I'm running sarge with 2.6.8-2-686 kernel on a new machine connected
to a hardware firewall (as eth1), shared with another machine (eth0).

  # ifconfig
  eth0
    ...
    UP BROADCAST RUNNING ...
    ...
  [no lo entry]

  # /sbin/ifup lo
  /sbin/ifup: couldn't read interfaces file "/etc/network/interfaces"

  # ls -l /etc/network/interfaces
  -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 794 ...

My interfaces file:

  auto lo
  iface lo inet loopback

  auto eth0
  iface eth0 inet dhcp
    address 192.168.1.2
    netmask 255.255.2555.0
    network 192.168.1.0
    broadcast 192.168.1.255

  dns-nameserver 192.168.111.1

Postfix installation said to put a dns-nameserver line here, and I put
in the address of the firewall.

I have in /etc/hosts:

  127.0.0.1
  192.168.1.2

-- 
 
       Haines Brown
       KB1GRM