Arch Linux

It would help if you attached a systemd service file yourself.

main systemd file /usr/lib/systemd/system/ethtool@.service
[Unit]
Description=Ethtool configuration for %i

[Service]
EnvironmentFile=/etc/conf.d/ethtool.conf
Requires=network.target
After=network.target
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/ethtool -s %i $ETHTOOL_ARGS
Type=oneshot

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target


ethtool config file /etc/conf.d/ethtool.conf
ETHTOOL_ARGS=""

usage sample
systemctl enable ethtool@eth0

Using the suggested service file would not solve my ethtool requirements.

Due to a network hardware bug I need to call ethtool like this:

/usr/sbin/ethtool --features eth0 tso off

You can easily add you want in /etc/conf.d/ethtool.conf since this service file handle any additional args here

The culprit is the "-s %i" argument in the service file.

The command "/usr/sbin/ethtool -s eth0 --features tso off" does not work, it has to be "/usr/sbin/ethtool --features eth0 tso off".

However it is not a big deal. I currently use a service file that invokes ethtool the way my network adapter requires it.

it's possible to remove all options and make EnvironmentFile=/etc/conf.d/ethtool@%i.conf
I checked and it works correctly

EnvironmentFile=/etc/conf.d/ethtool@%i.conf
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/ethtool $ETHTOOL_ARGS

That sounds great!

So all people who require an arbitrary single call to ethtool will be able to use this solution.

I assume, interfaces which require more than one call to ethtool are rare.

> I assume, interfaces which require more than one call to ethtool are rare.

you can make systemctl enable ethtool@abc, systemctl enable ethtool@cde etc every with own config file
because of /etc/conf.d/ethtool@%i.conf, so multiple calls on single iface is possible in this case

Ah, I see.

Maybe I should have looked up the meaning of %i earlier:

http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.unit.html

So hopefully your service file will soon be added to package ethtool.

Regards, Peter.

systemd now provides link units (systemd.link(5)) for this, so I don't think this makes sense anymore.

@Daniel: How would you call ethtool using systemd link files?

As far as I can see a [Link] section does not offer an option to disable TCP segmentation offload.

It doesn't support those tunables yet, so you're still stuck with a oneshot service calling ethtool or a udev rule. I think you'll have more success filing feature requests against systemd for those missing features.

The proposed ethtool service isn't an appropriate way of doing it. For one thing, it applies the settings from a single configuration file to every interface it has been enabled for. Using the /etc/conf.d like this at all is deprecated in favour of overriding or extending units in /etc/systemd/system. It also lacks a dependency on the device that it's modifying - depending on network.target isn't enough.

You would be better off just using a udev rule if what you're doing isn't yet supported by link files. It will be one line and won't be racing with the device if it isn't used for network.target. There are ways to do it correctly with a unit file, but I don't see a way that would be sensible to ship in the package.