Re: ifplugd, guessnet, ifscheme, netscript, whereami, ... -- what should I use?

["A. F. Cano" <afc@shibaya.lonestar.org>]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 04:01:51PM +0200, Enrico Zini wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 08:55:41AM -0400, Matej Cepl wrote:
> 
> > first of all -- is there FAQ somewhere?
> 
> 
> 
> > wlan0 (@ my university, my wife's one, Internet cafe) via random DHCP
> > server. I used to use ifupdown-roaming on Debian/woody, but it disappeared.
> 
> You can do similar things with ifplugd, waproamd and guessnet:
> 
>   ifplugd  will ifup your eth0 when a cable is plugged and ifdown it when
>            you remove the cable
>   
>   waproamd (IIRC) will ifup your wlan0 when you associate with an AP and
>            ifdown it when you get out of range
> 
>   guessnet will help you choose the right configuration if you have more
>            than one (see http://guessnet.alioth.debian.org/)

Anyone using laptop-net?  Last time I looked at it and tried to make it
work under woody, it seemed extremely flexible and could supposedly do
just about anything that I could imagine.  Unfortunately, the woody
version was full of bugs.  The maintainer at the time was working on an
extensive rewrite for sarge.  From my correspondence with the maintainer
at that time, laptop-net was to use some lower-level tools.

I am now trying to set up an old ibm thinkpad 600E (with sarge and
kernel 2.6) and a new twist is that the kernel assigns eth0 as the first
interface, whether it is wired or wireless (separate pcmcia cards).  Of
course each type comes with its own set of parameters, so it's not as
simple as it seems.  It is likely that laptop-net can handle this, but
has anyone had first hand experience with sarge laptop-net?

> > However, I would like to get some scripts which would set exim's smartserver
> > to a free SMTP server, etc. Can anybody suggest one (of course, fully
> > compatible with ifupdown)?

Laptop-net can do this.  It can do just about any arbitrary
configuration, actually, by using separate configuration files for any
program that are dynamically loaded as the network situation requires.
IIRC, the laptop-net maintainer told me that the new version for sarge
was to use ifupdown.

> ...
> > And why the h...l, maintainers of all these packages didn't set down and did
> > not create one package (or at least virtual package), which would just work
> > and make all additional settings (like for example setting of mail server)
> > via debconf configuration? Why cannot I do
> > dpkg-reconfigure ifupdown-laptop

Laptop-net, being extremely flexible, has the potential to do this, and
the maintainer was probably shooting for such capability, using as many
low-level existing packages as possible.  I haven't looked at laptop-net
since, so I don't know the current state.  Anyone care to elaborate on
the present status of laptop-net?

Augustine