[Voyage-linux] Network problems voyage 0.6.2: no DNS, ifup and ifdown errors

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When using a 3G wireless card on voyage 0.6.2, three issues are noted.

Test case: I'm using Sierra Wireless MC8790 3G card. As is typical of 3G
cards, it uses ttyUSBn devices, and is brought up using ppp.
To bring it up automatically (using ifup -a) I configure an entry in
/etc/network/interfaces:

auto ppp0
iface ppp0 inet ppp
  provider vf
#  post-up /usr/sbin/ntpdate ntp0.cs.mu.oz.au


1. The interface ppp0 does come up, but DNS is not working.
/etc/resolv.conf is empty, and it is apparently due to the fact that it is
not writeable.
If I 'remountrw', then bring the link up, it works fine.
With 'remountro', it doesn't work.
In voyage 0.5.2, it works all the time, even when /etc is read-only.

I'm guessing that networking does 'remountrw' during a critical time in
0.5.2, but can't find exactly where it happens.

How is this supposed to work, and what has changed?


2. 'ifup ppp0' works OK, but 'ifdown ppp0' fails with error message
  "ifdown: interface ppp0 not configured"

This works OK in voyage 0.5.2

I can bring the interface down using "poff vf" instead,
but it seems something has broken in 'ifdown'.


3. The 'post-up' line in /etc/network/interfaces is run before the
interface is really up. That's why it is commented out.
This is found in voyage 0.5.2 as well.

It's easy to work around this one, but interesting to know why it doesn't
work.

Since ppp networking takes a while to come up (30+ seconds), maybe the
ifup process just kicks off the pppd, assumes that it is all done, and
moves on to the 'post-up' operations?


Any assistance most welcome, especially for the DNS problem.

thanks,