conflicting command line options and dhcp.conf statements

[Ted Lemon]

On Tuesday 16 May 2006 13:43, Andrew Pollock wrote:
> I know of multiple people who get extremely cranky about dhclient's
> behaviour where it ignores interfaces on the command line in favour of
> interfaces mentioned in the config file.

I know of people who get cranky when the sun rises.   But in fact the problem 
you're describing is largely the result of a vast difference between the 
design philosophy with which I originally wrote the client and the design 
philosophy of the ifup and ifdown scripts.

In the context of those scripts, of course it's a horrible botch that the 
command line doesn't override the configuration file, but it was never my 
intention that the DHCP client should be started and stopped on a 
per-interface basis, nor that there ever be more than one instance of it 
running at a time anyway.

I say this not to indicate "so it's not a bug," but merely to point out that 
there's a reason why it's that way - it's not an accident.

BTW, since you're here, do you have any clue why the kernel won't receive 
broadcasts to 255.255.255.255 when the interface has a zero IP address?