So what do you (and anybody lurking on this conversation) think about this: 1. On boot, a script checks

/etc/network/interfaces

to detect if it is "old." That means that both a) no line matches the regex

(node[1-4]|ge[01])

and b) at least one line matches the regex

[^#]*eth0

. 2. If it's a new

interfaces

file, nothing happens, the script exits. 3. If it's an old

interfaces

file, the script copies

/mnt/rom/etc/network/interfaces

to

/etc/network/interfaces.new

if the latter doesn't already exist. It could perhaps also add a comment block at the top explaining what the heck is going on, why this file was created, and offer some simple steps to migrate the

interfaces

file by-hand. 4. If both

interfaces

and

interfaces.new

exist, ifupdown-ng is configured to prefer the latter and ignore the former.