Re: Network profiles

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Sun, 2008-11-09 at 11:33 -0500, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> (resending, since I messed up recipients)
> 
> Hey,
> 
> I saw something call network profiles being committed to
> gnome-control-center recently.  I didn't see any prior discussion on
> this list. Maybe a little explanation of the plans and purposes behind
> this would be good.
> 
> Also, I wonder how this will interact with closer NetworkManager
> integration in the future. Medium-term, all network-related
> configuration needs to be made dynamic and depend on the current
> connections, which are under the contol of NetworkManager.

Yeah, I'd be interested to hear exactly what that support is supposed to
do.  Network "Profiles" are generally a bad idea, because they are a
huge stick trying to solve a problem that's generally better solved with
more targeted, intelligent mechanisms.  You can quite often autodetect
what "profile" you need to use, and that's exactly what NetworkManager
does with it's connections.

Now if it's more about mounting your work NFS when at work, and your SMB
share when at home, that's fine, but that can certainly automatically
key off what NetworkManager connection is currently active, because NM
has essentially already determined your location for you...  but in the
end, _most_ stuff like printers, network shares, etc, should be
auto-detectable.

Dan