Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 55665
ifconfig does not reflect changed ipaddress configuration
Last modified: 2008-05-01 11:38:01 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98) Description of problem: when the ip address of the machine is changed from dhcp to a static ip or vice versa, after doing `/etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart', the program `ifconfig' does not reflect the new ip address on its output. The earlier ip address is displayed. Only after a reboot, ifconfig displays the new ip address. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): net-tools- 1.56-2 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Login as `root' user. 2. Run `setup' on command line and go to the networking option. 3. Change your ipaddress to a different one from the earlier one. 4. Restart the network by `/etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart'. 5. Run `ifconfig'. Actual Results: It is observed that the new ip address is not reflected immediately. Expected Results: ifconfig should have shown the new ipaddress configuration. Additional info: -
That problem come from /sbin/ifdown. Since RH7.2, /sbin/ifup and /sbin/ifdown use /sbin/ip to create and delete IP addresses. You change your address in step 3. and then restart network. So, /sbin/ifdown attempt to remove NEW address instead of OLD address. This causes error. RTNETLINK answers: Cannot assign requested address The OLD address not removed, and when /sbin/ifup create new address, That interface have two address, OLD and NEW one. Workaround is 1. /etc/init.d/network stop ; CHANGE configuration ; /etc/init.d/network start or 2. /etc/init.d/network stop ; /sbin/ip addr flush eth0 ; /etc/init.d/network start Anyway, it's a serious bug. Must be fixed soon.
The workaround works perfectly. It seems the problems arises only when the ip address is changed from dhcp to static or from static to static. The other way (i.e. static to dhcp) runs fine without any errors.
This is fixed in a later initscritps package (6.40.2-1, for example.)