Network Manager's Upstart configuration is wrong - Network Manager doesn't start in case of faulty ifupdown configuration

[Michael Schaller]

Hi everyone,

If you add a faulty entry to ifupdown's configuration (/etc/network/interfaces or sourced in files) then Network Manager doesn't get started by Upstart.

As an example add this block for a non-existent network interface to /etc/network/interfaces:
auto bogus0
iface bogus0 inet dhcp

If you reboot your machine then Network Manager won't be started by Upstart.

The issue with Network Manager's Upstart configuration is that it starts on the following condition:
start on (local-filesystems
   and started dbus
   and static-network-up)

This is wrong as the static-network-up event is never emitted in case the ifupdown configuration is (partially) invalid.
In order to fix this issue please use the following start on condition:
start on (local-filesystems
   and started dbus
   and started networking)

This is an issue in all currently supported Ubuntu releases.
Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Best,

Michael Schaller

[Michael Schaller (misch-9)]

Mathieu, what do you think?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Margarita Manterola (marga-9)]

I just spent two hours yesterday debugging this issue, Network Manager was not starting because there was a static interface configured that wasn't present.

The fix is simple and works, please apply it.