Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Arwed von Merkatz <v.merkatz AT gmx.net>]

On Fri, Apr 14, 2006 at 11:57:53AM +0200, Mads Laursen wrote:
> On 14/04/06 05.30, Juuso Alasuutari wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> The tool i was thinking of is our netconf command, in which you can
> setup the networking.
> 
> > > 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?
> 
> I'm thinking that it might be nicer to have a MAC field in eth?.dev
> and have the line in oo-binding.rules call a script that looks into
> the .dev files for a match and figures out the name that way. It could
> perhaps allow us to setup new default .dev files for newly added
> interfaces.
> 
> The reason I'm suggesting this is, that I think it would be a lot
> nicer to keep all the network(-card) config in /etc/sysconfig/network
> instead of spreading it out over more files. And the format is also
> simple enough that something like netconf actually works quite nicely.

That is possible with udev, udev rules can call out to a program to
determine the name for a device. Sounds like a good idea to me.

> In fact I'm thinking that maybe stuff like ifplugd and wpa_supplicant
> would be nicer if their _per-interface_ config was also in eth?.dev,
> if they are installed? Maybe have a plugin dir that netconf scans for
> scripts that add features, and then each screen would display its
> default options plus any that was added by a plugin?
> 
> > > 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.
> 
> The reason I looked at gnome-system-tools is that they claim to do
> some xml-based frontend/backend stuff, so perhaps we could have a
> backend that does what netconf does and suddenly we can choose to use
> $EDITOR, netconf, or the gnome gui - all using the same config-files.
> But of cause somebody has to do the backend, so unless I get
> interested enough and find the time to do it, I guess it will just sit
> there. BTW it is a required depend of gnome-profile and the only tools
> that work in it is the boot (grub) editor and possibly the gdm
> configurator (but that one doesn't understand how to ask for the root
> password). 

A long time ago I tried getting the tools to work for us and gave up.
Back then it was a complicated mess of perl scripts + xml that somehow
accidentally worked for some distros ;)

-- 
Arwed v. Merkatz                              Source Mage GNU/Linux developer
                                                    http://www.sourcemage.org