I also ran into this. Your assessment seems correct. As a temporary stop gap, you can configure the following in network/interfaces:
iface bond0 inet dhcp pre-up modprobe bonding pre-up ifconfig bond0 down || exit 0 pre-up ifenslave -d bond0 eth0 || exit 0 pre-up ifenslave -d bond0 eth1 || exit 0 pre-up ifconfig bond0 up pre-up ifenslave bond0 eth0 eth1 post-down ifconfig bond0 down This is basically just doing the work that enslave's ifup/down plugins should do, on your own. ** Changed in: ifupdown (Ubuntu) Status: Unconfirmed => Confirmed -- Bonded interfaces donlt seem to work with DHCP https://launchpad.net/bugs/63988 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs