I don't need any IP address on eth0, but I need it to be up. I can
manually run "ifconfig eth0 up", but I can't figure out how to do this
automatically at boot time. I have tried to put in the following
in /etc/network/interfaces:
auto eth0
iface eth0
However, ifup complains about incomplete parameters. Does anyone know the
correct way to solve this problem? Please keep in mind that I can already
do this from an /etc/rc.local script or somesuch, but I consider those
kind of solutions to be a hack, and I prefer to do things the
way "proper" way, ie. using the distro's scripts.
in /etc/network/interfaces:
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet manual
The manual method is described in the manpage "interfaces"