Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Juuso Alasuutari <iuso AT sourcemage.org>]

On Thursday 13 April 2006 19:48, Mads Laursen wrote:
> On 13/04/06 16.10, Juuso Alasuutari wrote:
> [snip]
>
> > What I've described here is imho the last and most annoying thing
> > standing between us and The Future(TM). Yes, kill the beast that is
> > hotplug. So I'm asking for ideas on how we could at least ensure that the
> > network interfaces are consistent from boot one. Maybe add a script to
> > the udev spell which automatically creates 00-binding.rules to carve the
> > interface loading order in stone? I don't think it would be difficult.
>
> Perhaps the network configuration tool could do that? Either by adding
> the setup to 00-binding.rules or to the .dev files in
> /etc/sysconfig/network.

I'm not yet sure what tool would qualify for this. But I think we have to add 
udev rules. I don't see what use the .dev files would be, other than maybe to 
act as reminders in case something is lost.

> How much magic can udev actually invoke when figuring out the names of
> things?

I don't understand what you mean by this, could you explain?

> Speaking of the configuration tool - gnome comes with some gui stuff
> for configuring network and a number of other things. Anybody lokked
> at the possibility of adding whatever glue is needed to let them work
> on our setup?

Hmm, sounds to me a bit far fetched. Developing our own tools will probably 
be 
easier than solving various compatibility problems. And I think the official 
Source Mage gui is dialog. :) We don't want to enforce a graphical 
environment.

> Slightly OT: Is there some cannonical setup for networking with
> laptops?
>
> currently I'm using wifi-radar to scan for networks and connect to
> non-wpa networks and wpa_supplicant and ifup directly to connect to wpa
> networks (including my own).

Same here, except that I only use wpa_supplicant. I haven't yet had need for 
anything non-WPA. I'm not even sure if my laptop _can_ connect to a normal 
wifi without wpa_supplicant... Fujitsu-Siemens cr*p

> In my sort of ideal world the wired network should be configurable to
> go up and down as the cable is plugged and unplugged (something like
> ifplugd could probably do that) and the init system should handle this
> somewhat more gracefully than today. The wireless should be managed by
> wpa_supplicant, with some scripting to make bringing it up and down
> nice and easy. Bonus points if it integrated nicely with some
> gnome-friendly gui-stuff (yeah, sometimes I just want a point-n-shoot
> interface).

You should really try ifplugd. I love it. I did some work on the spell and 
now 
it does what it's supposed to, although I still have some minor fixes in my 
backpocket.
Just install ifplugd and enable the init script, put your interface names 
(e.g. INTERFACES="eth0 eth1") in /etc/ifplugd/ifplugd.conf, and select "Use 
static driver" for your interface modules in netconf.
You can also disable the UP_ON_BOOT option in netconf. Ifplugd will take care 
of connecting on boot and of course later, too, when the cable is plugged or 
unplugged.

Your thoughts about wireless management are basically the same I've had. It 
would take a considerable amount of work to code a tool to do all that, but I 
think that's something Source Mage could/should have in the not-so-near 
future.
As I already said we don't do graphical stuff in SMGL, but I don't see why a 
wifi manager couldn't be done in bash. With a balanced mixture of 
wpa_supplicant, cron, wireless-tools, ifplugd, and maybe dialog to add some 
posh, it's totally possible.

> Really nice would be a solution to make stuff like ssh-sessions and
> incoming connections work as the connectivity changes.

With ifplugd this shouldn't be any problem. When link status changes it 
automatically executes a certain script, which normally just executes ifup or 
ifdown. You can either modify that script or tell ifplugd to execute any 
other file on link up/down.

Juuso