[gentoo-dev] rfc: only the loopback interface should provide net

[William Hubbs]

All,

I've been pondering for a while why All of OpenRC's network interfaces
provide net.

My understanding of the "net" service is that it is there to signal that
a generic network connection is active.

What I would like to do in OpenRC is change the network scripts so that
only the loopback interface provides net.

The down side of this approach will be that if a daemon uses a specific
ip address in its configuration, or if it binds to a specific address,
the user will have to set up the appropriate configuration options in
/etc/conf.d. For example, if I setup sshd to use 192.168.10.1 and eth0 has
this address, I have to put the following line in /etc/conf.d/sshd:

rc_need="net.eth0"

One advantage I see of this approach is it will provide a fix for bugs like
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=228973 by requiring users to
configure services like this to start after the interface they use
is started.

Attached to this message you will find the patch I want to apply to
OpenRC to make this change.

Any thoughts, comments, or suggestions would be helpful.

William