Start system with 'downed' carp interfaces

[Ulrich Spoerlein]

Hello,

I'm looking for a generic way to create and configure carp interfaces
upon boot (so daemons can bind against the IP address), but keep the
carp interfaces 'down'.

This is to allow the administrator to first check every service after
the failure, and if deemed ready, put the system back into production
by simply issuing: ifconfig carp0 up

But there are several problems:
ifconfig_carp0="foo bar"
will always "up" the interface first via /etc/rc.d/netif
ifconfig carp0 foo bar down
will ignore the 'down' and up the interface. This is especially
announing. I wish ifconfig would honour the down statement, even
though the manpage says the interface will always be brought up when
assigned its first address.

Using a start_if.carp0 with the following contents
ifconfig carp0 vhid 1 1.2.3.4/24
ifconfig carp0 down

and
ifconfig_carp0="down" in rc.conf will result in an 'up' interface. I
also disabled devd, as it seems to be running pccard_ether carp0 start
as a result of the interface creation. Although it is started
sometime after the interface has been created.

How are other people handling the startup of carp interfaces?

Uli