[GLLUG] gentoo Question 1: dhcpcd

Jeremy Bowers jerf at jerf.org
Tue Mar 8 15:05:51 EST 2005


Mike Simons wrote:
> lo is the loopback interface.  It should already be set to start on 
> boot.  Its been like that with all my Gentoo systems at least.  If 
> you're going to be moving this computer around a lot, and not always 
> going to be near an access point, I would recommend just leaving the 
> wireless to be started manually.  Dhcpcd takes quite a while to timeout 
> when there is no connection, so this would speed up your boot time.

Better is to cut the timeout. The relevant option to dhcpcd is "-t", 
followed by a number indicating the seconds to timeout at. I'm using 5 
and it is tolerable; since fixing my network settings a few days ago I 
just let wlan0 and eth0 start up and they fail or don't as is 
applicable. I don't think I've ever seen a DHCP connection that hadn't 
connected in 5 seconds but eventually did; YMMV but ISTM that would 
indicate problems elsewhere.

In /etc/conf.d/net, I have the line

dhcpcd_eth0="-t 5"

and in /etc/conf.d/wireless I have

dhcpcd_private="-t 5"

where "private" is my wireless network's ESSID; fix as applicable. (For 
other networks I tend to just connect manually as for me that is a rare 
occurance.)


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