Blocking until the network is ready at boot?

[Dennis Glatting]

On Thu, 2012-01-12 at 09:57 -0500, kpneal at pobox.com wrote:
> What's the correct way to get the rc.d scripts to block until the
> network interface is _fully_ ready to carry traffic?
> 
> The problem I'm having is that the ifconfig of the interface completes
> but the port hasn't reached "status: active" yet. So the stuff that
> starts next (sendmail, ntpd) can't reach the network. Is there a way
> to get startup to wait until the interface is active?
> 

I modify /etc/rc.d/netif and and insert a "sleep 15" after the ifconfig
loop. It is an obnoxious problem.
 

> I'm running FreeBSD 8.2/amd64.
> 
> bce0: <Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5709 1000Base-T (C0)> mem 0xd6000000-0xd7ffffff irq 36 at device 0.0 on pci1
> miibus0: <MII bus> on bce0
> brgphy0: <BCM5709C 10/100/1000baseTX PHY> PHY 1 on miibus0
> brgphy0:  10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, 1000baseT, 1000baseT-master, 1000baseT-FDX, 1000baseT-FDX-maste
> r, auto, auto-flow
> bce0: Ethernet address: d4:be:d9:ac:a1:e9
> bce0: [ITHREAD]
>