ethernet interface - starting on boot

[rdyas]

Hi All

I recently installed Vortexbox, which includes fedora release 14.

Got everything working, but could not access the network. After a bit of searching, found that "ifup eth0" activated the interface.

To do this on boot, I have added this command, together with my "mount /dev/..." command in file /etc/rc.local

It works OK, but I cant help thinking there's a proper way of doing this?

Thanks
Roger.

[BrianMicek]

Hi,
In /etc/init.d there is a file called "network". Your default run level (observed with the runlevel command) is probably 5 so you should have a symlink in /etc/rc5.d pointing back to /etc/init.d/network. For me, it looks like this:

[brian@bmicek ~]$ ls -l /etc/rc5.d/*network
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Jul  2  2010 /etc/rc5.d/S10network -> ../init.d/network

Assuming thats true for you, the scripts to bring up networking are in:
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ and the file your interested in is:
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifconfig-eth0. Specifically, check that ONBOOT=yes. Here is what mine looks like for a static configuration:

[root@firewall ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
# VirtIO Device (virtio0)
DEVICE=eth0
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
USERCTL=yes
IPV6INIT=no
IPV6_AUTOCONF=no
NM_CONTROLLED=no
TYPE=Ethernet
PEERDNS=no
IPADDR=192.168.168.222
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY=192.168.168.1

An easier way might be to play with system-config-network which maintains these files for you.

[Mudgen]

Note that Brian's post says "ifconfig-eth0", which is wrong, but his code block says "ifcfg-eth0", which is correct.

Otherwise, his advice looks good. Also check that network or NetworkManager are starting at boot with "chkconfig <servicename> --list". Too tired to check into whether ifup eth0 will work without the service started.

You should also be able to fix whatever your mount issue is in /etc/fstab instead of doing it in rc.local.

[rdyas]

Thanks Brian & ghw

I tried onboot=yes in my ifcfg-eth0 file and interface is active, having commented the line in rc.local, so thanks for that. Thought I was doing the right thing by making a backup copy ifcfg-eth0.save, only to find linux had tried to configure this as a 2nd interface and created files for this interface in 2 other directories! its OK, got rid of them all now, and I'm back to just eth0.

Also noted that, since I installed GNOME desktop, I cannot ping my server as vortexbox.localdomain from my windows box. Interestingly, pinging as vortexbox is resolved OK? In System > Administration > Network >DNS tab - the Hostname is vortexbox.localdomain - any thoughts? sorry, don't really understand DNS yet, I know something is resolving name to ip addresses, but not sure if it's the router or linux?

thanks
Roger.

[Mudgen]

Yes, the network startup script does a search of everything in that folder that starts with ifcfg and doesn't end with .bak, .orig, .rpmnew, .rpmorig, or .rpmsave. Use one of those extensions and you'll be ok. One of the oldest gotchas in the Red Hat book. My usual experience is that with DEVICE= conflicts, you get the last one it encounters for that interface, not two interfaces configured.

Your ping issue is probably from your router doing local DNS, and the Windows machine is using the router's DNS, since it's a DHCP client. I'm not sure how the router is finding out about vortexbox, since it's not a DHCP client.