I'm considering drop the network hotplug support from the 'network'
service. This is the code that would automatically run ifup when a new
network device appeared, if there was a configuration for it.
The supported solution would be to use NetworkManager for these usage
cases (or wicd, or netplugd, or conman...) Alternatively, just run
ifup yourself.
Currently, this would happen in the following cases:
1. USB and/or expresscard hotplugged ethernet/wireless
2. PCI hotswap of a network card
3. Runtime addition of network interfaces in virtual system
4. Admin manually removes and reloads a driver module
For #1, those systems are generally better served by NM.
For #2, this is something with such heavy admin interaction that I
would suspect that it would be preferred to handle it manually. (Also,
swapping hardware likely invalidates the configuration in any case.)
For #3, you're unlikely to have a configuration written for a freshly
available device.
For #4, bringing up the device automatically can cause more issues
than it solves. (We've seen this happen for vlans, for example.)
I'm curious - are there people that still rely on this behavior? If so,
for what cases?
Thanks,
Bill