When interface link is down, it makes no sense to initiate DHCP or ZCIP discovery which may take long time. As link is known to be down (via MII or Ethtool) prior to discovery start, we can avoid boot delay by quering link status before initiating the discovery. It gives better response time for user especially with laptops which have both ethernet and WiFi links but using only one of them for the moment. Patch is attached. It uses /sbin/ifstatus from ifplugd package (if installed) to report link status. It reports 'link down' only if ifstatus says so. Otherwise it reports that link is up and discovery mode should start. Doing so we avoid possible problems with old hardware or drivers which do not support either MII or Ethtool interfaces as /sbin/ifstatus checks all available APIs.
Created attachment 371 [details] Automatic Link detection for dynamic address assignments mode Depends on ifplugd package (if installed). No change in behaviour compared to current situation if ifplugd is absent.
Merged into upcoming 0.4.4.
Note that ifstatus was renamed to ifplugstatus: Tue Feb 10 2004: Version 0.22 released, changes include: rename ifstatus to ifplugstatus due to namespace collision, minor fixes.
Пропущено в 0.4.4, но безвредно. Исправлено в 0.4.5.