[Bug 839595] Re: failsafe.conf's 30 second time out is too low

[Clint Byrum]

Excerpts from ilf's message of Fri Oct 14 18:11:56 UTC 2011:
> I don't like this behavior.
> 

Hi ilf, sorry that you're experiencing problems with this change.

This behavior is meant to provide a balance between mobile systems and
servers/dedicated workstations.

The former needs flexible network management, which ifupdown really
doesn't provide, and the latter needs to be able to define a reliable
network configuration.

Your case where a mobile system that does want to use ifupdown to manage
a mobile connection instead of network-manager is normally handled by
the failsafe boot.

A suggested simple workaround is to remove the 'auto eth0' and instead
add an upstart job like this:

start on net-device-added INTERFACE=eth0
task
exec ifup eth0

This will bring up your interface as soon as the hardware is available,
but will not block the boot waiting for it to be up.

We can't really make this the default and still provide reliable
configuration for workstations and servers because we have no way to
know that you intend for an interface to be transient if you did not
install network-manager.

> I have eth0 auto in /etc/network/interfaces, so that it gets auto-enabled when plugged in.
> This being a laptop it gets moved around and doesn't always have an ethernet connection plugged in.
> No I'm supposed to wait two minutes on every boot OR not have the interface connected?
> Both are no real options for me.
> 
> What does this mean?
> > only servers and dedicated workstations should have network interfaces configured in this way
> 
> How else should I have my interface configured?
> BTW, I do not run Gnome, KDE or any other of those desktop environments. I do not have NetworkManager installed and won't install it for this.
> 

network-manager does not require a GUI.

You can use network-manager without a GUI via nmcli and hand edit
/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/*, or you can use connman.

Note that if you have X, you can also just install and make use of
network-manager-gnome without having to use all of gnome.

> I deleted my /etc/init/failsafe.conf for now.
> But I really think this behavior shouldn't be forced.
> 

This is going to make it so your system will never boot without eth0
plugged in. I'd suggest the ifup workaround above instead.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/839595

Title:
  failsafe.conf's 30 second time out is too low

Status in Release Notes for Ubuntu:
  Invalid
Status in “upstart” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  **** RELEASE NOTES ****

  If a system has network interfaces defined in /etc/network/interfaces
  as "auto", the operating system will wait up to 120 seconds for those
  interfaces to be fully detected and configured before continuing to
  boot the system. Most users of Ubuntu will not be affected by this
  change, as only servers and dedicated workstations should have network
  interfaces configured in this way.

  ************************

  as far as I can understand, the 30 second sleep in failsafe.conf means
  that /etc/init/rc-sysinit.conf will start within at most 30 seconds of
  'filesystem' and 'ifup lo' having occurred.

  I think that is really to small a number.   You're only safeguarding
  against the case where a user had an entry in /etc/network/interfaces
  that where the device was removed or is not connected.  Thats a very
  rare case.  Increasing the timeout to 60 seconds would make it less
  likely to have a false positive and have rc-sysinit start early.  (Ie,
  the case where a dhcp took 35 seconds).

  The user will only be punished by waiting an additional 30 seconds in
  the case that they have a  misconfigured or out of date
  /etc/network/interfaces.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
  Package: upstart 1.3-0ubuntu6
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-9.14-generic 3.0.3
  Uname: Linux 3.0.0-9-generic x86_64
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Fri Sep  2 10:02:10 2011
  EcryptfsInUse: Yes
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Beta amd64 (20100318)
  ProcEnviron:
   PATH=(custom, user)
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: upstart
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2010-11-15 (290 days ago)

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