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Re: Conditional rc.d scripts?



Jan Danielsson <jan.m.danielsson%gmail.com@localhost> writes:

>    Each time I do those manual steps I think "There must be
> (uncontroversial) ways to automate this.".
>
>    Best case scenario would be:
>    1) If a "3G"-device has been found by the kernel, use ppp.
>    2) Else, check if ath0 exists -- if so, use it.
>    3) Use bge0
>
>    Or, have it ask during startup:
>
>    "Where are you?
>    1) Home (wired)
>    2) Train (ppp)
>    3) Work (wifi)"

I hear here is something in ubuntu called "network manager".  But I
usually hear people being upset about it.

I did this by not having any interfaces configured, and a bunch of
scripts:

  DOWN - shut down and de-ifconfig'd anything set up by the rest
  WORK-wm0
  etc.

where the scripts were a combination of where (if I had static
addresses) and which interface.  I just ran them by hand.  They left a
location mark in a file so that on boot sometrhing would set it up for
the last location, so reboot would stay on the net.

This was kind of gross, but worked well enough that I didn't do more.

On top of this, it seems like you'd want soemthing to keep track of wifi
ssid and keys and automatically choose the right network.  I haven't
figured out if wpa_supplicant does this; the only thing that's obvious
is that it's way too complicated compared to the old days of ifconfig
nwkey.

So basically I think the right answer is a daemon to keep track of this,
kind of a meta-dhcp, and not to put details in rc.conf, but to start the
'do the right thing with the network' daemon.  The devil is in making it
sane and not annoying.

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