What is the preferred method to restart networking in Ubuntu and Debian

Solution 1:

It is just saying that the restart option is going away

/etc/init.d/networking stop; /etc/init.d/networking start

Note there is one line only! That is important when running network restart through the network.

Solution 2:

Run the init.d command without parameters, it will tell you which is the usage:

~# /etc/init.d/networking 
Usage: /etc/init.d/networking {start|stop}

Seems that restart is deprecated

It is deprecated also in Debian at least since:

netbase (4.38) unstable; urgency=low

  * Create /etc/sysctl.d/bindv6only.conf on upgrades and new installs
    to set net.ipv6.bindv6only=1.
  * Made the init script check for swap over the network. (Closes: #540697)
  * Temporarily depend on initscripts to work around a bug in multistrap.
    (Closes: #556399)
  * etc-services: added sieve (4190/tcp).
  * etc-services: removed sieve (2000/tcp). (Closes: #555664)
  * Made the init script warn that using the force-reload and restart
    parameters is not a good idea. (Closes: #550240)

 -- Marco d'Itri <[email protected]>  Sun, 06 Dec 2009 17:09:41 +0100

The related bug #550240 here

Which is quite nasty. To restart netwokring from remote probably the best and securest approach will be run the following within a screen session:

~# /etc/init.d/networking stop; /etc/init.d/networking start

As of today's networking init script, restart and force-reload will work in most circumstances. I guess it's reasonably safe to ignore the warning and still use restart. However I'll go with the stop + start way :-)

case "$1" in
start)
    process_options

    log_action_begin_msg "Configuring network interfaces"
    if ifup -a; then
        log_action_end_msg $?
    else
        log_action_end_msg $?
    fi
    ;;

stop)
    check_network_file_systems
    check_network_swap

    log_action_begin_msg "Deconfiguring network interfaces"
    if ifdown -a --exclude=lo; then
        log_action_end_msg $?
    else
        log_action_end_msg $?
    fi
    ;;

force-reload|restart)
    process_options

    log_warning_msg "Running $0 $1 is deprecated because it may not enable again some interfaces"
    log_action_begin_msg "Reconfiguring network interfaces"
    ifdown -a --exclude=lo || true
    if ifup -a --exclude=lo; then
        log_action_end_msg $?
    else
        log_action_end_msg $?
    fi
    ;;

*)
    echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/networking {start|stop}"
    exit 1
    ;;
esac

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Solution 3:

I use nohup sh -c "/etc/init.d/networking stop; sleep 2; /etc/init.d/networking start". I add sleep 2 because I think perhaps the issues with restart had something to do with hardware-dependent latencies, but this is unconfirmed and a semi-rule of thumb I'm somewhat ashamed to make public. So you can skip that if you're feeling rational!

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Solution 4:

The command below works well in a server environment, without throwing warnings. It implements both stop and start request on the networking service.

sudo service networking start

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Solution 5:

how about nohup sh -c "ifdown -a && ifup -a"