initiramfs-tools: configure_network retry indefinitely option

[Lucas Magasweran]

initramfs network booting by default fails after a fixed number of attempts/timeout to configure the network. For example, in an automation environment with heavy DHCP usage, a system will give up trying to get a DHCP lease after 265 seconds. This will require manual intervention or a hardware watchdog to power-cycle the system in order to retry getting a DHCP lease.

This patch for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS adds a notimeout kernel command line for casper that tells configure_network to instead retry indefinitely with an increasing retry interval.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

The attachment "casper_ipconfig_notimeout.patch" seems to be a patch. If it isn't, please remove the "patch" flag from the attachment, remove the "patch" tag, and if you are a member of the ~ubuntu-reviewers, unsubscribe the team.

[This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by ~brian-murray, for any issues please contact him.]

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

Please submit the change to Debian so that we do not need to carry another change in Ubuntu only. One way to submit it is to open a merge request on https://salsa.debian.org/kernel-team/initramfs-tools/-/merge_requests

To make the patch more flexible, the command line option could allow setting the timeout duration or retry count.