DHCP failover to static IP addr
 

I am configuring a Fedora Core2 Test2 system.
I would like to activate eth0 using dhcp, but if that fails (no dhcp server on the network) I would like to assign a static IP address.

One approach is using dhclient and creating an /etc/dhclient.conf file:

send host-name "home.test";
send dhcp-client-identifier "home";
request subnet-mask, broadcast-address, time-offset, routers,
domain-name, domain-name-servers, host-name;
timeout 30;
retry 60;
reboot 10;
select-timeout 5;
initial-interval 2;

lease {
interface "eth0";
option host-name "home.test";
fixed-address 10.1.1.1;
renew 1 2004/10/25 22:24:33;
rebind 2 2004/10/26 04:00:03;
expire 2 2004/10/26 05:30:03;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option broadcast-address 10.1.1.255;
option domain-name "test";
}

This functions normally when a DHCP server is present on the net, but when there is no server, 'ifup eth0' tries 10.1.1.1 but fails. It fails during a verification process for 10.1.1.1 resulting in bash dumping its environment variables and the contents of /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/network-functions. It then displays a usage message for ping... eth0 remains down.

Does anyone know if this is a proper use for the fixed-address parameter of a lease in the dhclient.conf file?

If this doesn't work, I guess I could just write a script that checks if the interface is up after initial network startup. If not, it can configure the interface with a static IP address.

Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance