Re: [PATCH 0/6] Auto-mount network drives per wifi connection

[Dominik Sommer <dominik sommer name>]

Hi Gary,

thanks for your feedback!

On 27.04.2012 09:28, Gary Ching-Pang Lin wrote:
> Hi Dominik,
>
> [...]
> The idea of the auto-mount on wifi connection is really interesting and
> nice-to-have. However, since the mount/umount operations are implemented
> in nautilus/gvfs, I wonder if it would be better to implement it in
> nautilus/gvfs
> as an extension.
I'm not sure either. The rationales that made me implement it in NM are:

1. NM keeps the "master list" of network connections with the UUIDs.
Implementing it somewhere else would add a lot of code for keeping these
in sync.
2. Mounts are just one resource that is network-dependent. Proxies and
default printers are further examples that could be configured per
connection. Implementing it in each responsible component (e.g. cups?)
would add a lot of redundant code to each project.
3. The Connection Editor provides a single place for configuring all
network-related / -dependent stuff.

The only rationale for not implementing it in NM that I came up with was
to keep NM clean of higher-level stuff. IMHO this was a weaker reason
than the pro's I found, though I think this is the question to be discussed.

> If you just need the connection/disconnection events or the name of the
> wifi AP or VPN, it's possible to get those information through the
> NetworkManager dbus interface.
>
> For example, the property of /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager, state,
> can be used to check if the system is online or offline.
>
> Monitoring the wifi SSID might be tricky but possible. You can monitor
> the dbus object of the devices, eg. /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Device/0,
> if the device type is wifi, and checks the ActiveAccessPoint property to
> get the dbus object of the connected AP and then retrieve the information
> you need.
>
> Besides the dbus interface, the APIs in nm-glib could make things easier.

Thanks for these hints! I haven't worked directly with dbus yet, but if
the discussion concludes NM is the wrong place, I'll dive into it. I'm
primarily interested in the connection ID though, so the resources can
also be configured for e.g. VPNs.

Dominik