IP Address Problems

[Derek Broughton]

dan wrote:

> On 09/01/06, dan <hentaidan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> According to my ISP, my IP address has been changing every so often,
>> for the last few weeks (possibly longer- they've been deleting the
>> messages that come up...).
> 
> Well I think I've found the problem... whenever I invoke
> "/etc/init.d/networking start" (after a "/etc/init.d/networking
> stop"), and at bootup, for some reason, my computer seems to be
> assigned a different IP address.

Yeah...  Now why on earth would you ever invoke "networking" _between_
boots?
> 
> But when I deconfigure eth0 using network-admin, and then reconfigure,
> I get assigned the same ("correct") IP address each time. I have to
> deconfigure before a reboot, in order not to connect with a
> "incorrect" IP address, and then reconfigure.
> 
> Is this a bug? Or by design? Or am I misunderstanding the usage of
> "/etc/init.d/networking start"?

If you ever issue that command yourself, or in any script, then probably :-) 
There really is no need for it.  It's strictly a boot-time script.

However, I can't see why you should need to deconfigure eth0 before the
system shuts down, or why it would make any difference to what happens at
start up.  First I'd try to eliminate ever using "networking".  If you have
interfaces that go away for whatever reason (like laptops) then ifplugd is
the tool for you.

For reference, it you look at the scripts in acpi-support, you'll see that
even though it does need to completely deconfigure the network interfaces,
and remove the modules, it doesn't attempt to use "networking".
-- 
derek