Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 21:26:52 -0700 From: Brooks Davis <brooks@one-eyed-alien.net> To: mobile@freebsd.org Subject: Configuring wireless network adaptors Message-ID: <20000925212652.A2456@Odin.AC.HMC.Edu>
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Hi, I'm doing some work this week on configuring wireless network adaptors. Unlike normal Ethernet devices they can need a substantial number of location dependent settings to be configured before you can do as little as firing up DHCP. I'm working on a script to facilitate this, but I need some advice as to where to insert the hooks in to the current system. As most of the cards are PC Cards I figured I'd ask -mobile though the Aironet PCI and ISA cards seem to require integration into the normal startup path as well. My intention is that the script will be given an interface name and will configure the interface for the local wireless environment (the exact details aren't important here) adding appropriate configuration to the environment to allow subsequent ip (etc.) network configuration of the interface. To do this it needs to be called in both /etc/rc.network and /etc/pccard_ether. This integration is where I'm having problems. One solution would be to extend /etc/start_if.<interface> support from /etc/rc.network to /etc/pccard_ether which would be easy and should probably be done regardless. The down side is that this requires the user to link or copy the script to the appropriate place in /etc for each interface to be supported which increases the pollution in /etc and is personally unsatisfying since my intent is for one script to serve all 802.11b cards. My proposed alternative is to create another magical ifconfig option on par with "DHCP" called something like "IEEE802.11" which would call my script appropriately. On the down side this creates a new "magic" ifconfig option that only works in the rc system and creates weird ifconfig semantics (though, frankly this is unavoidable if you want this to "just work" on a system using many networks). On the plus side, this avoids user creation of new files in /etc which is good for diskless systems and mergemaster. Additionally, this would force a partial sync of pccard_ether's ifconfig variable semantics with the rest of the system which IMO would be a good thing. Finally, it keeps configuration in /etc/rc.conf where it belongs. Which option seems more acceptable and in keeping with the philosophy behind the rc system? -- Brooks -- Any statement of the form "X is the one, true Y" is FALSE. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message
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