Re: Detecting network profiles using mac address of default gateway

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Wed, 2009-05-06 at 11:44 +0100, Giles Westwood wrote:
> Hi list,
> 
> Apologies if this has been asked before, I did try searching first and
> couldn't find anything. I was going to hack something myself but I'd
> rather use the network manager instead if it's possible.
> 
> I'm wanting to set a list of custom search domains at home and at the
> office so I'm using "address only dhcp" and setting dns servers and
> search domains manually in two different profiles. I'd rather that the
> network manager could get my dhcp lease, and use the mac address of
> the default gateway to determine what my location is, then select the
> correct network profile. Any pointers on how to do this much
> appreciated otherwise I'll be running a cron job and hacking things
> manually.

This sort of thing isn't implemented at this time; but we've discussed
it a lot before.  It would be an opt-in sort of thing, certainly not on
by default, because it risks spamming the network quite heavily.  While
it would probably be done slightly differently than you suggest, I think
the outcome would be the same.  Somebody needs to come up with a
suggested strawman implementation that we can beat about though.

Note that for 802.1x, we apparently *can* autodetect what connection to
use because there are some frames the switch transmits that we can pick
up on.  We'd still need arping or something for non-802.1X ethernet
though.

Dan