Yes, in the moment I hadn't thought about mis/poorly-configured spanning
tree holding a port down. I agree it would be more robust to background
a poll of ethtool for each interface and then bring dhclient up (and
perhaps down?) as appropriate.

Perhaps a cleaner approach would be something like ifplugd or netplug.
Although there are drawbacks - ifplugd requires libdaemon and netplug
depends on the per-driver implementation in the Linux kernel.

On 03/15/2013 03:49 PM, Jarrod B Johnson wrote:
> I agree with the ethtool check.  Was more thinking about the DHCPv6
> stuff.  Was hoping to make IPv6 'just work' without configuration if
> available without a lot of exotic configuration.
> 
> I'd have ethtool probably sit in a loop on the various nics periodically
> checking for link.  Not only are there cases where a cable is actually
> unplugged.  With some NICs and link scenarios link negotiation actually
> delays link up long enough to falsely detect as unplugged even that late
> in the cycle.
> Inactive hide details for "Daniel M. Weeks" ---03/15/2013 02:00:19
> PM---I can agree to some extent - you likely will have the n"Daniel M.
> Weeks" ---03/15/2013 02:00:19 PM---I can agree to some extent - you
> likely will have the necessary information on the DHCP server. Howe
> 
> From: "Daniel M. Weeks" <[email protected]>
> To: xCAT Users Mailing list <[email protected]>
> Cc: Jarrod B Johnson/Raleigh/IBM@IBMUS
> Date: 03/15/2013 02:00 PM
> Subject: Re: [xcat-user] genesis: limit DHCP startup to connected interfaces
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> 
> I can agree to some extent - you likely will have the necessary
> information on the DHCP server. However, if you put yourself in the
> place of an installer or sysadmin: would you want the additional
> complexity of looking in another separate log when diagnosing a problem
> or "following along" during a boot, having to match timestamps or
> interleave 2+ logs? Furthermore, consider a situation where that DHCP
> server is handled by a different person or group within the organization
> and access to those logs is restricted - there would be another big
> hurdle to solving what could otherwise be very straight-forward.
> 
> Besides that, isn't it just silly to bring up DHCP on an interface that
> doesn't have the cable? (Yes, always having it running covers the
> situation where a machine is booted and then a cable is plugged in
> afterwards. However, I think connecting to the node on the boot NIC
> (which will always have DHCP running) and starting DHCP on the second
> interface is an order of magnitude less work than connecting the cable
> already was. This is even more true if it's multiple systems or multiple
> cables thanks to psh.)
> 
> On 03/15/2013 01:39 PM, Jarrod B Johnson wrote:
>> I would personally be leaning toward suppressing dhclient induced
>> logging messages or at most logging them to ramdisk.  Given the fact
>> that the server also logs and the dhcp server is almost always a server
>> within convenient reach, I don't think the syslog having dhclient
>> messages from genesis is a big enough value given the cost.
>>
>> Inactive hide details for "Daniel M. Weeks" ---03/15/2013 01:24:48
>> PM---This is a follow-up to my last patch for syslog, motiva"Daniel M.
>> Weeks" ---03/15/2013 01:24:48 PM---This is a follow-up to my last patch
>> for syslog, motivated mainly by the amount of log cruft present
>>
>> From: "Daniel M. Weeks" <[email protected]>
>> To: xCAT Users Mailing list <[email protected]>
>> Date: 03/15/2013 01:24 PM
>> Subject: [xcat-user] genesis: limit DHCP startup to connected interfaces
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>> This is a follow-up to my last patch for syslog, motivated mainly by the
>> amount of log cruft present after resolving that issue.
>>
>> dhclient is started on all interfaces during /bin/doxcat whether those
>> interfaces are connected or not. Since ethtool is present in the genesis
>> image for x86 the attached patch uses it to check for a link and only
>> starts dhclient on connected interfaces.
>>
>> If there is a good way to configure/determine if IPv6 is NOT used in the
>> environment it would also be good to skip starting the v6 copies of
>> dhclient when it is unnecessary. Before I go and add something
>> unnecessary, is there currently a clean way to make this determination
>> (perhaps guided by the site table)? Thanks.
>>
>> --
>> Daniel M. Weeks
>> Systems Administrator
>> Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations
>> Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
>> Troy, NY 12180
>> 518-276-4458
>> [attachment "doxcat-only_connected.patch" deleted by Jarrod B
>> Johnson/Raleigh/IBM]
>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>>
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> 
> 
> -- 
> Daniel M. Weeks
> Systems Administrator
> Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations
> Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
> Troy, NY 12180
> 518-276-4458
> 
> 


-- 
Daniel M. Weeks
Systems Administrator
Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY 12180
518-276-4458

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