Comment 18 for bug 123773

I decided to try my theory of using dhcp on the parent interface only. It works and sends out dhcp requests as expected, if it doesn't get any responses, the virtual interfaces have to wait for it to be backgrounded before they are brought up (not a big deal.. 10-15 seconds or something I think), but the downside, is that if you ifdown eth1 (the parent interface with dhcp on it), you down all of the virtual interfaces.

I'm guessing the downing of all virtual interfaces is intentional.. and makes sense, however, this limits us to not being able to shutdown the dhcp side of the nic without killing the rest of the virtual interfaces. If the dhcp could run on a virtual interface (assuming the parent and the other virtual interfaces are not using dhcp, since the mac address is shared), one could ifup/ifdown the dhcp virtual interface without affecting the parent or other virtual interfaces on the card.

Thankfully this bug/design is not hindering roll-out, and is more of an observation showing usability issues.

Regards,
Tyler.