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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