Changing timeout when using DHCP on interfaces

[Christopher Murtagh]

On Mon, 21 Oct 2002, Stephen Hocking wrote:
>I have an iBook, which has both its internal ethernet and an airport
>card.  When I don't have it plugged into an ethernet cable, the boot
>process takes a horrensously long time when attempting to bring up eth0.
>Is there any way I can shorten the timeout on this without removing the
>request altogether?

 Sorry, I don't have an answer for this one either, but would be
interested in the solution. I have tried changing the max time in the pump
config file (sorry it was a while ago, so I don't remember exactly where,
and my iBook is sleeping in my backpack), but this didn't do anything.
The thing that also bites, is that if you use the SunGEM driver, and the
laptop is not connected to anything, it will spit out:

Oct 16 20:17:01 mafalda kernel: eth0: switching to forced 100bt
Oct 16 20:17:08 mafalda kernel: eth0: switching to forced 10bt

back and forth endlessly in /var/log/messages making the file get pretty
big fairly quickly. The SunGEM docs mention a config file, but I have yet
to make it work. Ideally it would be nice for the interface to shut down
when it was not connected, and the perhaps save some precious battery
power.

 So, if anyone has had any luck on either of these it would be much
appreciated if they could share it.

Cheers,

Chris

-- 

Christopher Murtagh
Webmaster / Sysadmin
Web Communications Group
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec
Canada

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