iphitus.org

What happened to beta 1? It wasn’t properly released, it was too messy.

This release is just to stabilise netcfg2 a bit more before I really consider netcfg v3
Source Downloads

Packages will be in [testing] in the next 48 hours.

netcfg v2.1.0 beta 2

• Remove driver specific hacks/quirks, and require them to be opt-in via config option (see wireless.subr)
• Separate automagic connection code from net-profiles
• Fix various bug
• Add option to run iwconfig with whatever arguments before connecting (all wireless setups)

More details on the netcfg2 git branch on projects.archlinux.org

In other news my wireless card is sick, it does this intermittently. A quick search on LKML and a few other places found no other cards experiencing this.

From dmesg…

ipw2100: exit - failed to send CARD_DISABLE command
....
ipw2100: ipw0: No response from Symbol - hw not alive
ipw2100: ipw0: Error loading microcode: -5
ipw2100: ipw0: Failed to power on the adapter.
ipw2100: ipw0: Failed to start the firmware.


Oh and the questions:
raca: But could you add suport for wvdial and ppp connections?
ppp support is in netcfg2 already, have a look at the example config. If you’d like more, post a feature request on the Arch Bug Tracker

lloeki: also, I hope you will be keeping the unix philosophy of ‘one good tool for one precise task’ and not create some kitchensink
Definitely keeping the one tool philosophy. That’s one reason why the automagic connection stuff has been separated out.

Patogen: I would like to see that you could execute certain commands for certain profiles
Already there. Have a look at the PRE_UP/POST_UP PRE_DOWN/POST_DOWN options. You can set either a path to a script, or just some commands separated by semicolons.

netcfg2 has been out for long enough, and i’m looking towards netcfg3.

In netcfg3 I hope to fix all that things about netcfg2 that I think _suck_.
* Move from iwconfig -> wpa_supplicant
* Access wpa_supplicant via dbus rather than crappy autogen configs
* Replace all scanning and ‘detection’ code
* Move from ifconfig/route -> iproute
* Gut existing attempts at ‘automagic’ – they all suck.
* Distro independent
* Route handling
* Not break current profile config syntax (no promises)
* More detailed status output

As for feature additions:
* A better auto connection system, packaged separately
* Possibly a daemon of some sort to monitor connection state and act upon changes
* Closing of existing feature requests on Arch bug tracker

Small goals, but should make a significant difference. The implementation will be cleaner and more flexible.

For netcfg2, I made lots of it’s guts reusable. I hoped that people would take it and develop it further, making separate auto-connect scripts and things. netcfg2 was meant to be a foundation for people to work with. Just source functions from /usr/lib/network/ and use them.

And it’s cool. You can do useful things with those functions. My ~/.xinitrc starts up different applications depending on what network I connect to. Or you could write a really good detection/automatic script.

That kinda didn’t happen. I don’t think I’ve seen a single third party script. Slightly my fault, I should have advertised it better, though I’m surprised nonetheless.

netcfg2 wasn’t mean to be the automatic network magic tool either. I probably didn’t do myself any favours including the auto-wireless and EXCLUSIVE= hacks though.

I’ll release another netcfg 2.0.x bugfix, and netcfg 2.1. After that the work will be on netcfg3 which will remedy netcfg 2.0’s flaws and bring it up to date with current standards. More on that another time…

I was considering posting something terribly boring about present influx of users disregarding the “Arch Way”

Instead, there’s:

• The History? according to schivmeister
• Patching from phrakture
• The Arch Way

These should all be required reading…

Arch is what you make of it. It’s yours to adapt to your liking, but don’t expect anyone else to adapt it for you, and don’t expect to get anything by demanding it.