[vox-tech] Wireless Networking Confusion

[Ken Bloom]

On Sunday 11 June 2006 18:12, Richard Crawford wrote:
> On Sunday 11 June 2006 16:07, Richard Harke wrote:
> > My laptop is configged to use a wired connection also. I have a
> > jack in the dining area in case I work on the dining room table.
> > But I found I had to do a ifdown eth0 (the wired connection) before
> > eth1 would work. eth0 is auto but eth1 is not. I also want to use
> > the wireless at hotspots and that turned out to be quite a hassle.
> > I have a mapping stanza in the interfaces file and that took a
> > while to get working. What works is
> > LOGICAL=HOME ifup eth1   The environment var LOGICAL is then
> > used in my script that is called from mapping stanza. There is
> > another name for a hotspot config. One issue remains.
> > If I go out to a hotspot, when I come home it does not work
> > cleanly. I have to manually modify resolvconf as it continues to
> > have the hotspot DNS enteries.
> > This is Kubuntu, Breezy Badger
> > Richard harke
>
> I ended up simply creating two separate stanzas in
> /etc/network/interfaces, and commenting out the undesired one
> depending on my location.  It's kind of a hassle, but I don't go many
> places with hotspots all that often.
>
> I'd like to see more details about how you did this.

My laptop's configuration is approximately as follows:

#eth0 is *not* auto, because I don't want it
#to slow ntpdate during boot when I'm not connected
iface eth0 inet dhcp

#Bring up this configuration as #ifup wlan0
#this is for connecting to networks without WEP
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
	wireless-essid any
	wireless-key open
#those are essential to clear the settings from whatever network you may
#have previously been connected to.

#bring this up as #ifup wlan0=ling
#take it down as #ifdown wlan0
iface ling inet dhcp
	wireless-essid LingCogLab
	wireless-key 0123456789

#bring this up as #ifup wlan0=home
iface home inet dhcp
	wireless-essid kenapt
	wireless-key 0123456789

(etc...)

And I have sudo configured to allow ifup and ifdown without a password
And I have a menu in fluxbox for connecting/disconnecting from all of my 
various wireless networks. I'm very particular to use the menu to 
connect/disconnect because I don't want to accidentally shut down eth0 
on my desktop while I'm connected by ssh. I suppose it's also possible 
to use ifrename or udev to rename eth0 on your laptop to something else 
so that it doesn't match your desktops/servers, so you can't take down 
your desktop/server's eth0 by autopilot.

  [submenu] (Internet)
    [exec] (Connect to Ethernet) {xterm -e sudo ifup eth0}
    [exec] (Disconnect from Ethernet) {xterm -e sudo ifdown eth0}
    [nop]
    [submenu] (Connect to Wireless)
      [exec] (Home) {xterm -e sudo ifup wlan0=home}
      [exec] (IIT) {xterm -e sudo ifup wlan0=iit}
      [exec] (LingCog) {xterm -e sudo ifup wlan0=ling}
      [exec] (Sunnyvale) {xterm -e sudo ifup wlan0=svl}
      [exec] (any) {xterm -e sudo ifup wlan0}
    [end]
    [exec] (Disconnect from Wireless) {xterm -e sudo ifdown wlan0}
  [end]

I haven't figured out how to make wpasupplicant work for me in Debian 
yet.

I have the resolvconf package installed to manage /etc/resolv.conf

[bloom at cat-in-the-hat ~]$ apt-cache show resolvconf
Package: resolvconf
Priority: optional
[...]
Description: nameserver information handler
 Resolvconf is a framework for keeping track of the system's
 information about currently available nameservers. It sets
 itself up as the intermediary between programs that supply
 nameserver information and programs that use nameserver
 information. Examples of programs that supply nameserver
 information are: ifupdown, DHCP clients, the PPP daemon and
 local nameservers. Examples of programs that use this
 information are: DNS caches, resolver libraries and the
 programs that use them.
 .
 This package may require some manual configuration.  Please
 read the README file for detailed instructions.
(For me, it didn't require any manual configuration)

--Ken Bloom


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