Re: restarting pump (DHCP) automatically when network unavailable at boot time

[bob@proulx.com (Bob Proulx)]

Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> On a machine in a local network, I have in my /etc/network/interfaces
> file:
> 
> auto eth0
> iface eth0 inet dhcp
> 
> But after a power outage, my machine sometimes restarts while the
> network isn't available yet.

That does not seem right to me.  I think that with the above it should
all work okay.

> In this case, I can no longer ssh to it. And I can't reboot it
> remotely.

Change the 'auto eth0' line to 'allow-hotplug eth0' instead.  That
triggers the dhcp to happen when the device becomes available.  That
will probably workaround whatever problem you are experiencing.  The
allow-hotplug is now the default in Etch.

> How can I make pump (the DHCP client I'm using) to try again
> periodically?

I think it should already be trying again periodically.  Perhaps the
timeout is very long.  You might try dhcp3-client instead.  I have had
good luck with it.

I am suspicious that something else is also involved here that is
causing confusion as to what is really happening.

> Note: When I'm in front of the machine, I still want to be able to
> use it when the network is not available (to do some local work,
> while waiting for the network to come back).

Sure.  Laptops operate that way a lot!

Bob