Bug 216130

Created attachment 178944 [details]
ifconfig

Hi, I'm just installing FreeBSD for the first time.  I ran into a bug
in the installer; in network setup.  The installer is the one on this
image: FreeBSD-11.0-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso

The machine is Qemu; a simple setup with one virtio network interface
and Qemu's 'soft' networking which provides a DHCP server.(*)

The bug is there's no way to cancel ipv6 setup without leaving ipv4
setup in an inconsistent state, if you first chose DHCP for IPv4.

I suspect the fix is fairly simple: when an interface is chosen for
configuration, if there's a DHCP client on that interface, shut it
down at that point.


Here's what I did: I first chose to set up ipv4 with dhcp, then when
asked "Would you like to configure IPv6 for this interface", I chose
"Yes".  I know very little about IPv6, I was just curious to see if
autoconfiguration would succeed; it might be nice to have it.  I
answered "Yes" to the next question too, "Would you like to try
SLAAC...?" I guess it failed, because after a little delay, "Resolver
Configuration" popped up with a lot of blank fields.  I had no idea
what to enter, so I pressed escape.  This took me back to the
beginning of network configuration.  (That's a good choice; jumping
straight to the next component would have confused me.)

I again requested IPv4 be set up with DHCP.  This time, it responded
with "DHCP lease acquisition failed," repeating this message if I
tried for DHCP again.  The only way forward was to say "No" to DHCP.
I cancelled static setup and resolver configuration, and cancelled the
network configuration too.

At the Final Configuration menu I selected network, again choosing
DHCP, and again the response was, "DHCP lease acquisition failed."

In the installed system (after reboot), the interface is active but
has no ip address.  Using nc to make connections to port 80 on various
machines fails silently if given an ip address, hostnames are "not
known". Screenshot attached, "ifconfig".

I have a VM image just for this bug, so if you want to see any config
files before I change anything at all, I can extract them from it.


(*): I always install to a virtual machine before installing to real
hardware.  It's a safe environment in which to find which Typical
Installer Bugs I'm going to run into, such as this one. :)  I'm glad I
only found the one.  I've used many far worse installers years ago,
declared to be "easy to use" but full of bugs and stumbling blocks.