Re: How to "ifdown ..." on squeeze?

[Tom H <tomh0665@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 8:42 PM, Dan B. <danb@kempt.net> wrote:
>
> On a new installation of squeeze, ifdown no longer works as it used
> to (on my old Debian system).
>
> When ifconfig lists an interface "eth0", neither "ifdown eth0" nor
> "ifdown eth" takes the interface down.  The attempts yield:
>  "ifdown: interface eth0 not configured" and
>  "ifdown: interface eth not configured".
>
> How does one take an interface down on squeeze?
>
> (My old system's /etc/network/interfaces had:
>  ...
>  auto eth0
>  iface eth0 inet dhcp
> On my squeeze system, it's:
>  ...
>  allow-hotplug eth0
> (with a commented-out line:
>  #NetworkManager#iface eth0 inet dhcp
> )
> )
>
> Also:  The reason I was trying to take it down and back up was to
> trigger a fresh DHCP query and corresponding host-name configuration.

When NM controls your connections, NICs aren't defined in
"/etc/network/interfaces", by default; you can change that behavior by
changing the "managed" variable of the "ifupdown" section of
"/etc/NetworkManager/networkmanager.conf".

You can also use "nmcli" to take down and bring up your NIC.