priorities and dependencies for network interfaces

[Florin Andrei]

Problem:
I've a laptop with a wired network interface (eth0) and a wireless
network interface (eth1). Both interfaces are configured for DHCP. The
wireless interface can connect to any SSID.
If i boot up the laptop without a network cable plugged in, the wireless
card will find an access point, get an address and all is good.
If i boot up the laptop with a network cable plugged in, it will get an
address and a default route from the wired network, but then it will do
the same with the wireless network! Often, this will result in unusable
network configuration (static route clashes, etc.)

Wish:
I wish my laptop would stop activating any other interface once the
wired network card is on.

Possible solution:
The various network interfaces should have dependencies:
- set a flag on ethX so that, if ethY is already up, don't activate ethX
- set a flag on ethX so that, if there's already a default route, don't
activate ethX
- etc
Also, the order the interfaces are brought up should not depend on the
interface name (first eth0, then eth1, etc.) because some interfaces are
named in a very different way (ath0, ppp0). Therefore, each interface
should get a priority flag (an integer) which should determine its place
in the boot-up queue.

I'm currently playing with /etc/init.d/network and hacking it to
implement some features mentioned above. But i'd like to get the group's
opinion before investing too much time and effort.
What do y'all think?

-- 
Florin Andrei

http://florin.myip.org/