Comment 2 for bug 249038

Same problem here, but i found a workaround.

Three commands in the shell:
sudo su
update-rc.d -f darkstat remove
update-rc.d darkstat defaults 89

Now darkstat starts later in the boot process. This brings darkstat to work, maybe because NetworkManager or another Prog is confusing darkstat at boottime.

But something is strange, darkstat is now running twice (show with "ps -A|grep darkstat"). But anyhow, it seems to work correct.