Our Networking Story

[Paul Smith]

On Fri, 2014-03-07 at 09:39 -0500, Bryan Quigley wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 1:34 AM, Dale Amon <amon at vnl.com> wrote:
> > The only feature I hold near and dear is that I be able
> > to ssh into a server in a rack 8000 miles away, fiddle
> > with /etc/network/interfaces if needed, and then reliably
> > ifdown/ifup one of god knows how many connections (I often
> > work with machines that have 8 or even more hardware ethers,
> > not to mention ethn:m's.
> 
> Could you detail what process you are exactly using to do this
> reliably?  Are you using bonds/vlans/bridging?

I'm not sure this level of detail is needed.

I've not tried this on Ubuntu, so maybe it already works fine, but
similar to the OP's request on remote Red Hat systems it is always
supported to run:

  service network restart

and know that your ssh session will not be dropped while the network
restarts (unless you screwed up the network config and it doesn't come
back up of course).

This also works:

  service network stop && service network start

Of course, trying to run "stop" followed by a "start" in a different
command line can't work:

  service network stop
    ... uhmmmmm ... oops ... time for a drive!!

I think the request is that there be a straightforward "restart" option
that is ensured to not drop the connection (assuming, again, that the
start works properly and you haven't changed details of the connection
you were using).