Re: [system-tools] CVS Branched

[Juan Luis Baptiste <juan baptiste kdemail net>]

On Monday 09 August 2004 10:35, Carlos Garnacho wrote:
> Hi Juan Luis :)

Hi,

>
> Sure, my idea was to show already in the XML the whole list of available
> supported interfaces (a la ifconfig -a) in this fashion:
>
> <interfaces>
>   <interface>
>     <dev>eth0</dev>
>     <type>TYPE_ETHERNET</type>
>     <enabled>0</enabled>
>     <configuration>
>       <auto>0</auto>
>       <bootproto>dhcp</bootproto>
>     </configuration>
>   </interface>
>
>   <interface>
>     <dev>eth1</dev>
>     <type>TYPE_WIFI</type>
>     <enabled>1</enabled>
>     <configuration>
>       <auto>0</auto>
>       <bootproto>none</bootproto>
>       <address>192.168.2.21</address>
>       <netmask>255.255.255.0</netmask>
>       <network>192.168.2.0</network>
>       <gateway>192.168.2.1</gateway>
>       <essid>my_essid</essid>
>     </configuration>
>   </interface>
>
>   <interface>
>     <dev>irlan0</dev>
>     <type>TYPE_IRLAN</type>
>     <enabled>0</enabled>
>     <configuration/>
>   </interface>
> </interfaces>
>
> Instead of letting the frontend to add any interface (even if it doesn't
> exist in the system), you already have a closed list with all the
> existing interfaces (and types) and you only have to worry to
> fill/modify/clear the <configuration> tag. It IMHO fixes:
>
> - better support for still unsupported interfaces: for example,
> slackware has no way of configuring irlan interfaces, this way we can
> prevent those interfaces to be shown in the frontend, and thus, to be
> configured too
>

Yeah, I didn't really get it why it was possible to add interfaces even if 
they didn't exist in the system, it's better to only be able to configure 
existing ones, unless we can _really_ add them, and I mean hardware 
autodetection, module loading, modifying /etc/modukes.conf, etc, and then 
configure the _really_ added network interface. 

This is more like a feature request :) we could use some hardware detection 
library, like libdetect from harddrake project [1] from Mandrake, it is 
really great and portable, it even works in other hardware platforms like 
powerPC and Alpha. And there are already debian packages of it :)

[1] http://www.mandrakelinux.com/harddrake/

> - better support of odd OS (compared to linux): for supporting somewhat
> correctly FreeBSD, the network frontend has to ask the correct interface
> name for a given type when creating an interface through the
> "get_interface_name" directive (we can't hardcode eth for ethernet
> interfaces, it can be dc,bfe,ed...). This way all this info is already
> in the XML
>
why then it's already a <dev> entry in the xml file? isn't this one the one 
wich informs the name of the interface being configured?

> - better support for wi-fi cards: it happens the same, they can be eth,
> wlan, ath... and instead of asking to the backend we can have already
> this info.
>

Are there any plans to support more wi-fi info like WEP keys, speed, operation 
mode, etc?

> - simplify frontend: right now there's too much logical weight in the
> frontends (yours and mine) which should be in the backend, as it's
> supposed to know about the system
>

wich kind of logic do you mean, I don't see too much logical weigh in my 
frontend, I symply call the backend, read the xml output, parse it and fill 
the GUI widgets when loading. When saving I validate all the info, generate 
the xml output and then call the backend and pass the xml to it.

Cheers,
-- 
Juan Luis Baptiste
http://www.merlinux.org
http://knetworkconf.sf.net