Bug#706268: net-tools: ifconfig does not detect interfaces at boot even after Required-Start: $network network-manager

[Claudio Moretti]

Package: net-tools
Version: 1.60-24.2
Severity: important

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Dear Maintainer,

ifconfig is unable to detect interfaces on a system at boot time, thus
making dependent scripts fail.
I noticed this after reporting #680212 because the output of
ifconfig during the bind9 initscript was empty.

I believed that it was related to the mounting of external filesystems
in /etc/fstab (ntfs-3g and several folders mounted with -o bind) because
removing them allowed me to see the output of ifconfig; when I retried
this afternoon, remoing those entries had no effect.

For the record, I edited the bind9 initscript in the check_network()
function, adding a couple of echo and output redirections.

Below is the output of today's testing:

===================================
Sat Apr 27 14:11:11 CEST 2013
You are user root
Output of /sbin/ifconfig is:

===================================
Sat Apr 27 14:14:07 CEST 2013
You are user root
Booting without binding NTFS folders in fstab
Output of /sbin/ifconfig is:

===================================
Sat Apr 27 14:17:29 CEST 2013
Booting without mounting NTFS drive in /etc/fstab
You are user root
Output of /sbin/ifconfig is:

===================================
Sat Apr 27 14:18:58 CEST 2013
Booting without mounting NTFS drive in /etc/fstab
You are user root
Output of /sbin/ifconfig is:

and my check_network() function is

=============================================================================
check_network() {
    if [ -x /usr/bin/uname ] && [ "X$(/usr/bin/uname -o)" = XSolaris ];
then
        IFCONFIG_OPTS="-au"
    else
        IFCONFIG_OPTS=""
    fi
    if [ -z "$(/sbin/ifconfig $IFCONFIG_OPTS)" ]; then
       #log_action_msg "No networks configured."
       echo "===================================" >>
/var/log/claudio-boot.log
       echo $(/bin/date) >> /var/log/claudio-boot.log
       echo "Booting without mounting NTFS drive in /etc/fstab" >>
/var/log/claudio-boot.log
       echo "You are user $(/usr/bin/whoami)" >>
/var/log/claudio-boot.log
       echo "Output of /sbin/ifconfig is:" >> /var/log/claudio-boot.log
       echo $(/sbin/ifconfig) >> /var/log/claudio-boot.log
       return 1
    fi
    return 0
}
=============================================================================

This prevents BIND9 from starting (thus my decision about the severity)
but it could affect every other package that is supposed to start when
$network is started.

Thanks,

Claudio

- -- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (1001, 'unstable'), (600, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages net-tools depends on:
ii  libc6  2.13-38

net-tools recommends no packages.

net-tools suggests no packages.

- -- no debconf information

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