network services at boot (was Re: Boot charting)

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Yi Qiang wrote:
<snip>

>>
> 
> I think we can leave ntpdate where it is, but make the script smarter
> and check if we have an interface up that's likely to provide internet
> access (i.e. ethX, whatever the wireless interfaces are called). 
> 
> For dhcp, there are two options that we should investigate.  If you take
> a look at the dhclient.conf man page, you see that you can specify a
> specific timeout.  The default is 60 seconds, any reasonable dhcp server
> will respond much faster then that.  I don't think cutting that down to
> 30, or even less would be unreasonable.  Also, dhclient has a flag
> '-nw'.  This forces it to go straight to daemon mode without waiting for
> an ip address however this is problematic for network dependend services
> that come after.

Is it possible to check with something like mii-tool as to whether
there's actually a link on the interface, and if there's definitely not,
skip the configuration (or at least immediately background it, so that
it will get an IP when plugged in)

Just a thought

Chris
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