On Thu, 2008-10-30 at 13:34 +0100, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote:
On Wednesday, 29 October 2008 at 21:57, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski (dominik(a)greysector.net) said:
> > > Not in the context of init.d/network, which is what I meant. (Well, not
> > > outside of gross hacks.)
> >
> > Yes, it works in that context. /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-wireless
> > needs a small patch which I posted in bugzilla and which has been ignored
> > for years. The patch isn't actually mine, it was posted on one of fedora
lists.
> > I can't find that bugzilla report right now so I'm attaching the patch
here
> > instead.
>
> Possibly because that particular patch wasn't ever in bugzilla (AFAICT.)
It was, although it contained reindentation cosmetics. I only cleaned it up.
> It's certainly a better one, but there's still the problem of entirely
> disparate configuration (manually editing wpa_supplicant.conf, etc.)
What's wrong with manually editing wpa_supplicant.conf?
Because it's not easily from anything but wpa_supplicant, and it's
completely different than the existing ifup/ifdown config system.
System-config-network would have to grow the ability to parse the
wpa_supplicant config file format. You can't override the variables
from /etc/sysconfig/network if you want to. There's no separation of
interfaces to allow for multiple connections with two or more wifi cards
with 'ifup number1' and 'ifup number2' independently.
A much better, more integrated and consistent implementation would have
each ifcfg file essentially be a network block in the supplicant config
file. When you 'ifup my-wpa', the scripts write out a new supplicant
config file using key/value pairs
in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-my-wpa and execute a supplicant
based on that, then somehow wait for the supplicant to connect by
listening on the specific control socket for a connection, and if no
connection occurs, time out and fail just like DHCP fails. When you
'ifdown my-wpa', it will terminate the supplicant based on the PID file
written to /var/run/wpa_supplicant-wlan0-my-wpa.pid and clean up the
routing and addresses.
That's what the patch _should_ do. Just tossing a config file off to
the supplicant is a cop-out half solution.
The patch doesn't break anything. I don't understand why, in
the pursuit
of all-encompassing NM-based network configuration, some people don't want
to allow any alternative methods.
Look in bugzilla. There have been wpa_supplicant bugs filed and many
mailing list posts where I and others have said "If somebody shows up to
add WPA support to initscripts in the right way that's great!" We're
just not going to spend effort on it.
Dan