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Re: networking



Mihira Fernando wrote:
> Bonno Bloksma wrote:
> > I have been wondering about this and have not seen any definitive
> > documentation, or if there is, I have not understood it.
> > Does "auto" imply "allow-hotplug"? If not, should I have both
> >    auto eth0 eth1
> > and
> >    allow-hotplug eth0 eth1
> > lines in my interfaces file?
>
> AFAIK, allow-hotplug makes the interface come up only when a cable
> is plugged in. auto makes the interface come up at boot time
> regardless of the cable state.

You are exactly correct.  Having 'auto' is the old way that starts
networking with '/etc/init.d/networking start'.  But that does not
enable event driven actions such as link status change from plugging
and unplugging the cable.  For that you need 'allow-hotplug'.  But
that new way doesn't enable '/etc/init.d/networking restart' to do
anything.

Since hotplugging is the new way the debian-installer now sets that up
for new systems.  Using an event driven network configuration is
definitely an improvement in general and the right direction to go.
But us old-timers who want to be able to restart the networking then
find that '/etc/init.d/networking restart' doesn't do anything.  For
that we also need 'auto' to be present.

This came up in discussion in the past.  I don't have the time at the
moment to find a reference link however.  But it is okay to have both
trigger conditions present.  Then both networking restart and link
status changes will affect the network configuration.

And of course for wicd or network-manager neither of auto or
allow-hotplug can be present.  For those tools only configure
interfaces that do not have any local configuration.

Bob

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