Checking for network connection

I'm running Fedora Core 2 on a laptop.

If the network cable is not connected, startup takes a long
time. Network configuration tries to get an IP address using
DHCP and this takes a couple minutes to time out.

Is there any way to check if the network cable is connected
so that I can bypass the DHCP check?

--
Michael Eager Eager Consulting (E-Mail Removed)

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In comp.os.linux.networking Michael Eager <(E-Mail Removed)> suggested:
> I'm running Fedora Core 2 on a laptop.

> If the network cable is not connected, startup takes a long
> time. Network configuration tries to get an IP address using
> DHCP and this takes a couple minutes to time out.

> Is there any way to check if the network cable is connected
> so that I can bypass the DHCP check?

Perhaps mii-tool output could be parsed, albeit it requires the
module for you NIC loaded and mii-status support in the
NIC/module.

# mii-tool
eth0: no autonegotiation, 10baseT-HD, link ok
SIOCGMIIPHY on 'eth1' failed: Operation not supported
eth2: negotiated 100baseTx-FD, link ok

eth0/2 are mii-status aware and "link ok" says there's a cable
connected with link. eth1 doesn't support mii-status so one would
be out of luck here.

--
Michael Heiming (GPG-Key ID: 0xEDD27B94)
mail: echo (E-Mail Removed) | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
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Michael Eager <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed)> ...
> I'm running Fedora Core 2 on a laptop.
>
> If the network cable is not connected, startup takes a long
> time. Network configuration tries to get an IP address using
> DHCP and this takes a couple minutes to time out.
>
> Is there any way to check if the network cable is connected
> so that I can bypass the DHCP check?

Posting to Google Groups was very flakey the past day or two -- think
my post failed to make it. So what, right?

$ man dhclient.conf
PROTOCOL TIMING is the first section

Sounds like you might be more interested in ifplugd:
http://www.stud.uni-hamburg.de/users...jects/ifplugd/

It uses several tools to check link status (ie., cable/patch cord
attached) before trying to bring up the interface. It's configurable
and it's intended for laptops that move around but there's no reason
it can't be used on desktops -- MDK includes it, IIRC.

hth,
prg
email above disabled