Hello!

I have a system, with a third-party network card using non-free firmware, where
systemd does not wait for the interface to come up before continuing boot.

The card uses the rtl_nic/rtl8168e-2.fw firmware file from the firmware-realtek
package.  When systemd wants to start the network, this firmware file is
direct-loaded, causing the link to go down for a couple of seconds.  However,
the rest of the boot process (including DHCP, NTP, OpenAFS, etc.) is already
continuing, while the interface is still down.

I am attaching the systemd journal, from boot up to the point where all of the
network-using services are normal.  The firmware load (and issues) start around
line 1034.

Am 30.04.2015 um 01:47 schrieb Karl Kornel:

Once /etc/init.d/networking has completed, the network is considered up.


Can you attach the output of
systemctl status networking.service
systemctl status ifup@eth0.service

(you need to run that as root).
Does it help, if you switch "allow-hotplug eth0" to "auto eth0" in
/etc/network/interfaces?

Ah, OK.  Sorry about that!  I thought systemd had taken over that
functionality.

Attached as "networking.service-status.txt" and
"ifup@eth0.service-status.txt".

Yes it does!  If I switch to "auto eth0", then everything will correctly
wait for the network connection to come up before continuing to boot.

I have attached "post-interface-change-networking.service-status.txt" to
show the output of `systemctl status networking.service` after I changed
from "allow-hotplug eth0" to "auto eth0".

~ Karl

Hello Karl,

Karl Kornel [2015-05-06 11:08 -0700]:
systemd side, as that's how ifupdown is specified to work.

For the Debian maintainers: Note that on Ubuntu we don't explicitly
support "allow-hotplug", as in the modern world pretty much everything
should be treated as hotpluggable. We only use "auto", fire
ifup@.service for auto interfaces, and wait for all auto interfaces at
boot (for up to 2 mins) to satisfy network-online.target. This is
simpler, more consistant, and more robust. If we want to move to this
regime in Debian as well, please let me know.

Thanks,

Martin

reassign 783779 ifupdown
retitle 783779 Fresh system interface gets allow-hotplug; doesn't wait
for full ifup
reopen 783779
found 783779 0.7.53.1
tags 783779 jessie d-i
noowner 783779
thankyou

Since this apparently isn't an issue with systemd, I'm moving this to
ifupdown.  I hope that's the right place for it!

Tagging as jessie because I didn't see this problem in wheezy, and also
tagging as d-i because the problem occurred on a freshly-installed system.

I thought this was related to bug 766943, but that's already been closed
in an earlier version.  Maybe this is related to bug 752919 or 550014?
Unfortunately, I don't know enough to say either way.

~ Karl