[ubuntu/debian] monitoring woes of /etc/network/interfaces...

["Daniel J Blueman" <daniel blueman gmail com>]

Network Manager 0.6.6 (in eg Ubuntu 8.04) monitors the
/etc/network/interfaces for changes and acts upon them as soon as the
file is modified.

This can be seen as a good feature in certain ways, but had two
significant drawbacks I find:

 - in Linux/unix philosiphy (thus expected usage), editing
configuration files can be safely done (multiple times) until some
subsystem is restarted/notified

 - if you're logged in, and (eg) /home is NFS-mounted, you get a
consequent system hang

Is there a strong case for this behaviour, or something else that
depends on this?

Many thanks,
  Daniel
-- 
Daniel J Blueman