Network discovering... too many options
Marcelo E. Magallon
please keep <mmag...@debian.org> in the Cc:. Thanks.
I was looking thru the selection of network discovering scripts in
Debian and I'm perplexed. The task is relatively straighforward: given
a laptop and a network connection spit something that can be used to
configure the laptop for the current network environment. Why are
there _so many_ options then? Let's see (feedback appreciated):
Package: divine
Description: Automatic IP configuration detection for laptops
A utility to locate current network address via arp requests and
perform light reconfigurations based on its findings.
"divine" is intended for laptop users or people who use their
machines in different networks all the time. It is meant to be run
from the PCMCIA network initialization scripts.
For more information see: http://www.fefe.de/divine
Sounds good. The only downside is that it seems to use PCMCIA, which
the laptop I have here doesn't even look at for network stuff.
Package: guessnet
Description: Guess what network is connected to an ethernet device
Based on the network detecting code of laptop-netconf, guessnet
tries to guess what network an ethernet device is currently
connected to, using fake ARP requests.
It has been written to be coupled with the debian ifupdown package
to achieve automatic network detection and configuration, but it
can be used stand-alone to implement smart network scripts.
I know this one, I have it on another laptop. Very simple and it's
easy to integrate it with ifup/ifdown.
Package: intuitively
Description: Automatic IP configuration detection for laptops
A utility to locate current network address via arp requests and
perform heavy reconfigurations based on its findings.
"intuitively" is intended for laptop users or people who use their
machines in different networks all the time. It is meant to be run
from the PCMCIA network initialization scripts or the command line.
Sounds like guessnet plus the "heavy configuration" stuff. I guess
it's something like /etc/divine/{network}/{up,down}.d/{dd}{stuff}, is
that it? Is the network detection algorithm different?
Package: laptop-net
Description: Automatically adapt laptop ethernet
The laptop-net package supports the built-in ethernet of laptops by
providing several integrated features that automatically adapt the
laptop to the network environment. The package is easily
configured to support a wide variety of network environments, and
supports manual as well as automatic management of the network
interface.
Laptop-net can automatically: start and stop the network interface
at appropriate times; disable the network interface when the
network cable is removed, and enable it when the cable is inserted;
select the network interface's IP address, either by probing the
network for known hosts or by use of the DHCP protocol; customize
the laptop's software configuration to match the network
interface's IP address.
This sounds like intuitively plus another package I discovered when I
was looking at this list, ifplugd.
Package: laptop-netconf
Description: network detection and configuration program for laptops
laptop-netconf can automatically determine the network to which
your laptop is connected, from a set of preconfigured alternatives.
Once the network has been detected, you can run arbitrary scripts
to configure the services on your laptop for correct local
operation.
This package requires some basic networking knowledge at present.
A sample configuration is enclosed.
Hmm... dunno what to think...
Package: switchconf
Description: Change network config for laptops
switchconf allows nomad laptop users to easily change their
configuration.
I think I've seen this one, but I'm not really sure. Sounds like
intuitively minus the guessnet bits :-)
Package: whereami
Description: Automatically reconfigure your (laptop) system [...]
whereami is a set of useful scripts and a coordinating system for
automatically re-locating your computer within the current
(network) environment.
Typically, you would use whereami to automatically detect and
re-configure your laptop when you move between a variety of diverse
networks and/or docking environments.
Although whereami will work best if all of your networks assign
addresses through dhcp, this is not a pre-requisite and the system
allows any technique to be used to ascertain the new location with
as little ongoing user intervention as possible.
Having ascertained the correct location, whereami will run
appropriate (user-configured) scripts to adjust the laptop
operation to suit the current environment.
See http://debiana.net/whereami/ for more information. You may
also get useful assistance from the debian-laptop mailing list,
which is frequented by several of the contributors.
This is the one that pops up a configuration screen at boot up, right?
Package: ifplugd
Description: A configuration daemon for ethernet devices
ifplugd is a daemon which will automatically configure your
ethernet device when a cable is plugged in and automatically
unconfigure it if the cable is pulled. This is useful on laptops
with onboard network adapters, since it will only configure the
interface when a cable is really connected.
Sounds like a nice addition to guessnet and intuitively.
Any comments? The current configuration on the other laptop is based
arround guessnet. It basically tries a couple of IP/MAC pairs and then
falls back to dhcp. There's an annoying pause when the laptop in
plugged to a new network where there's no DHCP server, but other than
that, I'm mostly happy.
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Tollef Fog Heen
| Package: divine
| Description: Automatic IP configuration detection for laptops
| A utility to locate current network address via arp requests and
| perform light reconfigurations based on its findings.
|
| "divine" is intended for laptop users or people who use their
| machines in different networks all the time. It is meant to be run
| from the PCMCIA network initialization scripts.
|
| For more information see: http://www.fefe.de/divine
|
| Sounds good. The only downside is that it seems to use PCMCIA, which
| the laptop I have here doesn't even look at for network stuff.
It has a sucky and quite restricted config file format as well.
[...]
| Package: intuitively
| Description: Automatic IP configuration detection for laptops
| A utility to locate current network address via arp requests and
| perform heavy reconfigurations based on its findings.
|
| "intuitively" is intended for laptop users or people who use their
| machines in different networks all the time. It is meant to be run
| from the PCMCIA network initialization scripts or the command line.
|
| Sounds like guessnet plus the "heavy configuration" stuff. I guess
| it's something like /etc/divine/{network}/{up,down}.d/{dd}{stuff}, is
| that it? Is the network detection algorithm different?
It is based on divine, but has been completely rewritten and supports
a lot of features missing from divine, like some wireless extensions
and such. I wish it had better integration with ifupdown, though.
Help appreciated. It uses the same algorithm as most of the other
packages: send out ARP requests and see who answers. It does support
detection by MAC address as well.
[...]
| This is the one that pops up a configuration screen at boot up, right?
that's netenv, iirc.
| Package: ifplugd
| Description: A configuration daemon for ethernet devices
| ifplugd is a daemon which will automatically configure your
| ethernet device when a cable is plugged in and automatically
| unconfigure it if the cable is pulled. This is useful on laptops
| with onboard network adapters, since it will only configure the
| interface when a cable is really connected.
|
| Sounds like a nice addition to guessnet and intuitively.
yes, help for getting this working well with intuitively would be good.
(I'm both debian maintainer and upstream for intuitively, as you might
have guessed.)
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`. `'
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Christian Surchi
> I was looking thru the selection of network discovering scripts in
> Debian and I'm perplexed. The task is relatively straighforward: given
> a laptop and a network connection spit something that can be used to
> configure the laptop for the current network environment. Why are
> there _so many_ options then? Let's see (feedback appreciated):
It's an interesting topic... and in fact I have a laptop from august
2002 and I have no stable network configuration system yet, with no
PCMCIA.
Ah... you forgot netenv that is the application that shows a menu during
the boot.
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Vincent Bernat
"Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmag...@debian.org> disait:
> Package: whereami
[...]
> This is the one that pops up a configuration screen at boot up,
> right?
I use it and it doesn't pop anything since it tries to determine on
which network you are and then executes several actions depending on
your preceding and current network.
> Any comments? The current configuration on the other laptop is based
> arround guessnet. It basically tries a couple of IP/MAC pairs and then
> falls back to dhcp. There's an annoying pause when the laptop in
> plugged to a new network where there's no DHCP server, but other than
> that, I'm mostly happy.
Some hackers tools have some possibilities to try to "divine" the
network without any information nor DHCP server :
<url:http://www.thehackerschoice.com/thc-rut>
I don't think there is an universal method to do that. There are ICMP
message to get network masks but they are generally not honored...
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Andrew McMillan
>
> Package: whereami
> Description: Automatically reconfigure your (laptop) system [...]
> whereami is a set of useful scripts and a coordinating system for
> automatically re-locating your computer within the current
> (network) environment.
>
> Typically, you would use whereami to automatically detect and
> re-configure your laptop when you move between a variety of diverse
> networks and/or docking environments.
>
> Although whereami will work best if all of your networks assign
> addresses through dhcp, this is not a pre-requisite and the system
> allows any technique to be used to ascertain the new location with
> as little ongoing user intervention as possible.
>
> Having ascertained the correct location, whereami will run
> appropriate (user-configured) scripts to adjust the laptop
> operation to suit the current environment.
I'm the maintainer (and upstream) of whereami, so no doubt I show a
little bias :-)
whereami deals with multiple ethernet interfaces and also can be
configured to recognise other hardware situations, such as a docking
station.
It hooks into ifplugd (if desired) to handle automatic reconfiguration
when you plug the network cable into an existing ethernet and it hooks
into pcmcia to reconfigure on insertion of a pcmcia card.
It doesn't pop up a configuration screen on boot (although it does run
on boot) - I have attempted to make it operate as automatically as
possible, although I do want to develop a GUI of some kind to make
maintenance of the two configuration files (location detection and
reconfiguration) more easily maintained by the uninitiated.
Cheers,
Andrew.
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Marcelo E. Magallon
> It doesn't pop up a configuration screen on boot (although it does
> run on boot)
Yep, sorry, as someone else pointed out, I was thinking of netenv.
--
Marcelo
Ilia Lobsanov
Can whereami or anything else handle this case?
ilia.
On 06 Jan 2003 08:39:13 +1300
Andrew McMillan
> what if one environment requires using mii-tool. eg. mii-tool -F 10BaseT-hd
>
> Can whereami or anything else handle this case?
whereami allows you to extend the tests fairly easily, so you could
write a short script to test this situation and use it in the detection
stage.
All of the existing tests are written as small shell scripts (in
/usr/share/whereami/tests) so there are plenty of examples there.
Tollef Fog Heen
| what if one environment requires using mii-tool. eg. mii-tool -F 10BaseT-hd
|
| Can whereami or anything else handle this case?
Intuitively can run any script after autodetecting the network at
least -- not sure if you are able to autodetect the network at all if
you have to change the network settings in that way before being able
to send packets. I would imagine whereami and such also can run a
script after configuring the if.
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UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are : :' :
`. `'
`-
Sam Clegg
> arround guessnet. It basically tries a couple of IP/MAC pairs and then
> falls back to dhcp. There's an annoying pause when the laptop in
> plugged to a new network where there's no DHCP server, but other than
> that, I'm mostly happy.
I've tried most of them and haven't found anything that really works
for me (apaert from ifplugd which does are very simple job and does it
well). I want something that will work with many PPP and ethernet
setups and integrate with ifupdown (i'm still waiting for PPP
settings to go in /etc/network/interfaces as well) and set things like
the exim smart-host. I'd say whereami is the closest to being usefull
but its hard enough to setup that I still do stuff by hand.
sam
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