On Friday 26 May 2006 2:28 pm, Philip Prindeville wrote:
What? No. You can have conditional requirements in the RPM...
such
as "*iff* the hardware I'm running on has a wireless NIC, then require
wpa_supplicant." So the RPM can detect a wireless adapter and
conditionally define a Requires: wpa_supplicant line in the NetworkManager
RPM.
Err I don't think so. rpm has no such abilities
> "Oh it looks like you have wifi and you want to connect
using WEP/WPA..
> please give me the root password."
The user is also completely capable of manually installing
wpa_supplicant
if he knows he will be using a plug-in wireless card (though more and
more wireless cards are mini-PCI, and hence don't get unplugged much).
This would be better than having an unconditional requirement for wireless
support in wired-only (desktop) environments.
I never said anything about run-time. It was purely install-time. You
can detect most of the hardware at install-time. What you can't (i.e.
a plug-in PCMCIA card) you can anticipate for and install the
wpa_supplicant package for anyway.
so a user with wireless needs to go through
more hoops.
you are also forgetting the case where wired users need authentication.
While not all that popular at them moment some large wired networks do
require this. Why i dont want you walking into the company where i work
plugging into a data jack and listening on my wire. so i make you
authenticate to use my wired network.
There are too many cases where this is needed.
--
Dennis Gilmore, RHCE
Proud Australian