After updating my system, net.eth0 was started at boot despite the fact that it wasn't set to start at the boot runlevel. This was annoying because it would default to DHCP and take some time to time out, hence delaying the boot of my system. The rc-update command couldn't be used to remove the service from the boot runlevel because it wasn't there in the first place!
localhost steph # rc-update del net.eth0 boot
* 'net.eth0' not found in any of the specified runlevels
After checking the Gentoo forums it seems that the service is started by hotplug or coldplug. To prevent it happening you have to edit /etc/conf.d/rc and add !net.eth0 to the RC_PLUG_SERVICES variable.
# Some people want a finer grain over hotplug/coldplug. RC_PLUG_SERVICES is a # list of services that are matched in order, either allowing or not. By # default we allow services through as RC_COLDPLUG/RC_HOTPLUG has to be yes # anyway. # Example - RC_PLUG_SERVICES="net.wlan !net.*" # This allows net.wlan and any service not matching net.* to be plugged. RC_PLUG_SERVICES="!net.eth0"
