On Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 10:28:20AM +0200, Frank Gevaerts wrote: > One problem with not looking at link state is that the interface is always > powered up. As I understand it, on some laptops this can make a measurable > difference. My own measurements are a bit inconclusive (powertop reports > that eth0 uses 0.3W more with ifupdown 0.8.16 than with 0.8.13, but total > battery drain seems to be the same), but I believe it's a good argument for > providing a link state option anyway.
It already has to power up the interface before it can check the link.
So there should be no difference in link power. The only difference is
that dhcp is always started now, which sends packets once in a while, so
that might make a tiny bit of difference.
> Apart from that, clarifying (in the documentation) what "hotplug" actually
> means would be good. I think your definition of "the device appears" is
> entirely reasonable, but these things are confusing and it's unfortunate
> that the concepts of "the device is there" and "the cable is there" have
> been mixed up historically.
I will add some clarification. Note that the check for the link state
has not always been there, and in any case was only done at boot time.
It never supported the case where there was no cable connected at boot,
and where you plugged in the cable at a later time. From the changelogs,
I see the main reason for adding this check for the link state was to
get rid of delays during boot. So I will focus on having that go away.
--
Met vriendelijke groet / with kind regards,
Guus Sliepen <g...@debian.org>
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