ha! I got it to work. Had to be done manually, I have no idea why the ifcfg- scripts just won't take it, all it ever accepted was eth0:0 as a regular subinterface and thats it.

ip link add link eth0 name eth0.1 type vlan id 1
ip addr add 0.0.0.0 dev eth0.1
ip link set eth0.1 up

dhclient eth0.1

# ip -d link show eth0.1
3: eth0.1@eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether b8:27:eb:20:25:16 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff promiscuity 0
    vlan protocol 802.1Q id 1 <REORDER_HDR> addrgenmode eui64 numtxqueues 1 numrxqueues 1

# ip addr show eth0.1
3: eth0.1@eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether b8:27:eb:20:25:16 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.0.117/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global dynamic eth0.1
       valid_lft 86066sec preferred_lft 86066sec
    inet6 fe80::ba27:ebff:fe20:2516/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

And... no one else on here knew that...

On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 1:09 PM, solarflow99 <solarflow99@gmail.com> wrote:

hmm, so then why won't normal subinterfaces work either then? Just taking a look over the code, I see what looks like vlan support as well:
1197         /* Init Rx */
1198         /* Set Vlan */
1199         ret = smsc95xx_write_reg(dev, VLAN1, (u32)ETH_P_8021Q);
1200         if (ret < 0)
1201                 return ret;
On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 1:02 AM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 7:32 AM, solarflow99 <solarflow99@gmail.com> wrote:
> Has anyone setup subinterfaces like eth0.10, etc? I have a tagged vlan and
> I can't get it to see the devices at all, all I ever get when trying to
> bring up the interface is:
>
> device does not seem to be present delaying initialization
>
> I had to modprobe 8021q manually, but it doesn't help anyways, even without
> tagging it doesn't see anything else except eth0 by itself.

I don't believe the smsc95xx driver supports vlans (from a grep of the
driver code) I'm not sure if that's a hardware limitation or whether
it's just not been implemented in the driver.