Comment 7 for bug 351378

On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 11:20 PM, Tom Metro <email address hidden> wrote:
> That may be partly right. I see /sbin/dhclient-script contains the
> comment:
>
> # The alias handling in here probably still sucks. -mdz
>
> and there's clearly evidence that it is attempting to support virtual
> interfaces:
>
> if [ -n "$alias_ip_address" ]; then

dhclient-script(8) says "If an IP alias has been declared in
dhclient.conf, its address will be passed in $alias_ip_address, and
that ip alias should be deleted from the interface, along with any
routes to it." Most likely that comment and surely that code is to
support the inclusion of an alias definition in your dhclient.conf(5),
as opposed to running dhclient on an alias interface.

>> If you don't use this script, those errors go away.
>
> But is that a practical option? Doesn't the script provide a pile of
> needed glue?
>
> Patching the script seems more viable.

The script does provide a lot of glue, but working around it as a
debugging technique isolates what errors are coming from the script
and what errors are coming from the program itself. I don't believe
patching the script will do you any good until the 'Bind socket to
interface: No such device' error from dhclient is resolved, because it
appears to be unable to use the interface to send the DHCP request.

>> I did test and confirm that dhcpcd=1:3.2.3-1.1 does work on alias interfaces on intrepid.
>
> Is it a drop-in replacement that works with the rest of the existing
> infrastructure in Ubuntu, like /etc/network/interfaces?

Removing dhcp3-client (which removed ubuntu-minimal) and installing
dhcpcd worked just fine with /etc/network/interfaces on a test vm for
me about five minutes ago, and thus appears like a clean enough work
around.